By Annie Dunbar

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Week by week, the challenges have become greater for UK as it dives further into SEC play. Saturday will be no different as the Cats prepare to take on the No. 1 ranked Mississippi State Bulldogs, who UK head coach Mark Stoops said is playing “red hot.”

UK is coming off an ugly 41-3 beat down against LSU and is banking on a quick and smooth turn around. However, this weekend brings in a physical Bulldogs squad that has a multidimensional quarterback under center. MSU senior quarterback Dak Prescott, who has been in the football spotlight throughout the season, has a cannon of an arm and has the ability to run, something that the Cats have noticeably struggled against. That key aspect of the game needs to be the dagger that stops MSU. However, Stoops believes he’s seen improvement from his defense and its ability to stop the ground raid.

“Believe me, I’m not crazy,” Stoops said. “I’ve coached defenses that were pretty darn good against the run. The good news is if you take away some of the explosive runs, that can get corrected in certain spots, just physically we actually did some very good things. They ran the ball, what, 51 times. And a good portion of some of that yardage came late and it came on some finesse runs, some 11 personnel Q run, and things like that.”

Aside from stopping the run game, another big concern for the Cats’ will be minimizing mistakes. Stoops thinks that his Cats matched up with LSU physically but the mistakes that UK made were capitalized by the Tigers.

“When you make mistakes, they’re magnified,” Stoops said. “Mistakes are going to cost you games, they’re going to cost you on the road at LSU, making mistakes we did early in that game, it’s going to cost and you it’s going to be magnified. It gets out of control at that point. We can’t have that and we’ve got to coach them better and be more disciplined across the board.”

Bulldogs head coach Dan Mullen sees the conference showdown as a big challenge for his squad.

“They are playing hard and with a lot of energy,” Mullen said.” There are guys stepping up and making big plays for them when they need them. That is a sign that they have bought in to what Coach Stoops is trying to build. I think you are seeing those steps pay off on the field for them this year. They are 5-2, with both losses coming on the road in the SEC. One was a triple-overtime game. When you look at the improvement that they have made, they can compete with anyone.”

Mullen also believes UK sophomore quarterback Patrick Towles doesn’t get enough credit for his ability to run the ball out of the pocket.

“If you look at their overall body of work on the season, they have very talented players,” Mullen said. “Towles really throws the ball well and has the size to be able to stand in the pocket and throw it. He is very deceptively athletic. He is a much better runner than he gets credit for. They rotate their running backs through and they all bring something different to the table. They have some explosive wide receivers. They certainly have a lot of big time players on their team.”

The Bulldogs and Cats are set to kickoff at 3:30 in Commonwealth Stadium for CBS’ SEC game of the week, exposing both squads to national attention.

“Anytime you’re playing a No. 1 team in the country, you’re going to have great exposure,” Stoops said. “We want to play well and represent our program and what we’ve been doing and all the hard work, so it’s important for us to go out and play well.”