Rich Brooks was all but fired, the program was an also-ran, and LSU had won 49-0. That was last year. 13 games later, Kentucky has completed one of the most stunning turnarounds in recent college football history, and has its high point with the win over LSU. Just how improbable was this? Pete Fiutak looks at the UK turnaround.
By Pete Fiutak
Kentucky beat LSU in triple overtime
Every coach just wants to look ahead to the next game and the next opponent. One game at a time, stay focused, the next game’s the most important one, yeah, yeah yeah. Fine, when the next game is against Florida, you have to do that, but for ten minutes, Kentucky, and especially its head coach, deserves to savor the 43-37 triple overtime classic win over LSU.
Who cares about the Bluegrass Miracle? What 49-0 loss last year to the Tigers? What number one team in America?
And you wanted Rich Brooks fired.
The Kentucky blogger types couldn’t type fast enough, or mean enough, wanting Brooks gone after an ugly 3-8 2005 season. The fans were assuming this was a lame duck coaching tenure before someone bigger and better was going to come in and start up the momentum that Guy Morriss, who unceremoniously bolted for Baylor when UK wouldn’t match an offer, had started.
There were rumors of Doug Williams, and even Bill Parcells, to take over the gig when Morriss left. Instead it was Brooks, who didn’t exactly get the crowd jumping after his stint with the St. Louis Rams. But Brooks turned into a solid recruiter, started to build up the athleticism and talent level, especially at quarterback, snagging Andre Woodson and super-prep Curtis Pulley, and quietly was putting the pieces in place.
But the wins weren’t there, going 9-25 in his first three years.
Things didn’t appear to be turned around last season, beginning the year with an ugly 59-28 loss to Louisville to not only start things off on a sour note, but also make the fan base cringe over the thought of a whole year of listening to Cardinal fans chirp … again. After the ugly loss to LSU, Brooks was 12-29 and had everyone trying to figure out who the best fit for the program might be.
And then came a seemingly insignificant 34-31 victory at Mississippi State. Little could anyone know that a win in Starkville would spark a run not seen outside of the UK basketball courts since 1977, and no one could’ve guessed how the two LSU games would bookend a night-and-day turnaround that’s as big an upset as any shocker this season.
A stunning win over Georgia was part of a nice run that finished with a stunningly easy 28-20 victory over Clemson in the Music City Bowl to get the juices flowing. Woodson was a preseason Heisman candidate, the offense was supposed to be explosive, and UK was everyone’s under-the-radar team. But there was one slight problem: defense.
Kentucky had the second worst defense in America in 2006 (thank you, Louisiana Tech), the second worst pass defense (well done, Kansas), and wasn’t quite a complete team, thanks to a weak offensive line and no running game.
And now Kentucky beat the number one team in America.
The Wildcats are 11-2 in their last 13 games, and now have the type of exciting team that proved it could play with anyone in the country. Now Kentucky is big-time, and now the program is an actual living, breathing SEC power, at least for this year, and has to be taken seriously the rest of the way.
This isn’t just a program going from bottom-feeder to a player in any old conference; this is the SEC UK is rolling in. This is the league that’s supposedly too tough for anyone to make some big noise in from out of the blue. But Brooks and his staff have done it, and now with Florida, Georgia and Tennessee ahead, (and getting the Gators and Vols at home) things might start to get very, very interesting.
Of course, it helps when the LSU coaching staff decides to keep running the ball in the third overtime, but this was a win over the number one team in the country. Now, if Kentucky wins out and South Carolina loses a game … let’s not go there yet.
For now, just beating a team like LSU is big enough for a program, and a coaching staff, left for dead. And it’s big enough to make Kentucky a dangerous threat the rest of the way in this improbable season.
Source: cfn.scout.com
