A high noon kickoff is set for Saturday afternoon in the bluegrass of Lexington.
Georgia comes in ranked fourth nationally with a record of 3-1, but sitting on a 41-24 loss at second-ranked Alabama. The Bulldogs opened the season with a 37-10 win at Arkansas, then won back to back high profile home games, downing Auburn 27-6, and topping Tennessee 44-21.
Kentucky heads into Saturday with a record of 2-3, dropping a 20-10 decision at Missouri. The Wildcats are awfully close to having a better record. The season began with a 29-13 loss at Auburn in which Kentucky had some tough luck, including what looked like a touchdown at the end of the first half transformed into a turnover. Then came a 42-41 overtime loss to Ole Miss – a missed extra point proving costly. But Big Blue got things on track the next week.
A 28-2 win over Mississippi State goes down as an all-time great defensive performance for the Wildcats. Then came a history-making triumph over Tennessee. The Wildcats returned two first half interceptions for touchdowns, caused four turnovers in the opening 30 minutes and rolled to a 34-7 victory over the Volunteers.
It was Kentucky’s first win in Knoxville since 1984, a streak of 17 consecutive losses against Tennessee at Neyland Stadium. This was another signature win under the watch of Mark Stoops, who has elevated the program in Lexington to becoming a contender in the SEC East. En route to a 10-3 season in 2018, Kentucky broke a 31-game losing streak to Florida, and won in Gainesville for the first time since 1979.
Kentucky followed that up with an 8-5 campaign in 2019. Stoops’ Wildcats have posted wins over Penn State and Virginia Tech in back-to-back bowl games.
The wins over Florida in 2018 and Tennessee two weeks ago were drought-breakers for Kentucky. Now the Wildcats will try and do the same against Georgia. The Bulldogs ‘ran the decade’ against Kentucky in the 2010s, and carry a 10-game winning streak in the series.
This season’s matchup is the eighth in the last nine years that Georgia heads into the Kentucky game coming off a loss. Several of those were against Florida. The exception was in 2018, Georgia’s last visit to Lexington with the East on the line, as the Bulldogs followed up a 36-17 victory in Jacksonville with a 34-17 win over Kentucky. Last year in the rain, coming off an upset loss at the hands of South Carolina, the Bulldogs prevailed 21-0 over Kentucky in a driving rain storm.
The Bulldogs aim to keep championship dreams and a long winning streak in the series alive, while the Wildcats seek the upset and another signature victory against an SEC East foe.