Cats, Dores face off with major bowl implications

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Fresh off its first conference win in nearly a calendar year, the UK football team (4-5, 1-4 SEC) will move on to the Vanderbilt Commodores Saturday in a game with major bowl implications. Both Vanderbilt (4-5, 1-5 SEC) sit two wins away from bowl eligibility with three regular season games remaining.

“All of them are big, every one of them,” UK head football coach Joker Phillips said of games late in the season. “Every one of them now. The second part of the season, the second season we talked about, they all are big.”

The Cats will face travel to Vandy, followed by a trip to play the Georgia Bulldogs, before concluding the season at home against Tennessee. Vanderbilt, after hosting UK, will travel to Tennessee and to Wake Forrest to finish its season.

The Cats and the ‘Dores are similar in a number of ways. Both teams have just one SEC win on the year, and both teams’ lone win came against Ole Miss. Both UK and Vandy have switched to a new quarterback midseason, and both schools still have a common opponent remaining in Tennessee.

But both programs have taken divergent paths to end up at these similar points.

The Cats thus far in 2011 have come up short of the fans and media’s expectations. Coming off five straight bowl appearances, at least six wins became the expectation in the Bluegrass, and the days of being an SEC doormat were a thought to be a thing of the past.

But this season, with a 2-4 start and a four game losing streak to open conference play that saw UK at the wrong end of a 165-36 cumulative deficit, the Cats are on the outside of bowl eligibility looking in, and time is running out on their season.

Vanderbilt, on the other hand, normally flies well under the radar of the SEC. What once was a guaranteed conference win for most has now become a serious bowl game contender.

With Jordan Rodgers (brother of Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers) now under center, improved recruiting classes and a newly instilled confidence about the program, Vandy has been a tough out to get in conference play. In its last three SEC games, the ‘Dores lost to Georgia, Arkansas and Florida by a combined 13 points. UK lost by 38 to Florida alone.

“The old Vanderbilt was, I don’t want to say a pushover, but compared to some of the other teams they didn’t really put up too much of a fight,” senior linebacker Ronnie Sneed said. “But this year, they’re playing everybody close. It’s going to be a difficult game.”

Coming from different places, both UK and Vanderbilt have now arrived together on the pinnacle of the postseason. Saturday, both teams will be fighting not only to get a second SEC win, but to travel a step closer to a bowl game.

“Our backs are to the wall right now,” senior tight end Nick Melillo said. “There’s no other place for us to go but forward. It’s either make plays and win games or we’re going to be sitting at home during Christmas break.”

Missouri to join the SEC

The Southeastern Conference announced Sunday that the University of Missouri, formerly of the Big XII conference, would be the SEC’s 14th team, joining fellow former Big XII school Texas A&M.

Missouri will become the seventh member of the SEC East, countering the move of Texas A&M to be the West’s seventh team.

The SEC also announced via the Twitter tag @SECPRGuy that the conference has not discussed expanding its conference schedule from eight games a year to nine. Should the schedule expand to nine games, UK would no longer be able to schedule a game against Louisville on a yearly basis.

This move, or lack there of, is significant for UK because as long as the SEC schedule remains at eight games a year, the Cats will still have room to schedule UL every year.