Honestly one of the biggest games of the Mark Stoops tenure at Kentucky will play out on Saturday afternoon as Vanderbilt comes to town. The main reason isn’t because it’s Vandy as much as Stoops needs to prove to the school, fans and boosters that UK has passed Vandy and are making progress in his fourth season. Derek Mason wants to do the same at Vandy and has the SEC’s leading RB in Ralph Webb to try and get that done. For us, this simply comes down to which team is more desperate right now and that definitely points to Kentucky. The Cats still have a really bad taste in their mouth from last year’s devastating loss in Nashville where they simply couldn’t do anything right. While UK still won’t be confused with a Top 10 team, there have been some encouraging signs for these Cats in recent weeks. Stoops took over a more active role on the defense following the New Mexico State game and it immediately paid dividends against South Carolina, a game UK won 17-10. The next week, they went on the road at Alabama and even though they ended up losing 34-6, they really played a solid first half vs. Bama and looked like a team that had a much better idea of what they wanted to do defensively. While UK’s offense isn’t always a thing of beauty, they have played much better with Stephen Johnson under center and Vandy’s offense is ranked dead last in the SEC, averaging just 303 total yards per game. The home team has won five of the last six in this matchup. We expect this game to be a low scoring affair and would think the Under 51 is also probably worth a look, but we have a good feeling UK understands the magnitude of the moment and will rise to the challenge here. We see a 24-14 type of win for UK. The Sharps say…
3 Units – Kentucky (-3)