In its first game of the 2023 college football campaign, the Kentucky Wildcats defeated the Ball State Cardinals 44-14 on Saturday.
One of Kentucky’s newest offensive additions, Re’Mahn Davis, a running back transfer from Vanderbilt, took the field by storm in his first game as a Wildcat and landed in Lexington with a bang.
Lexington marks Davis’ third stop on his career map as he began his collegiate run with the Temple Owls in 2019 before transferring to Vanderbilt in 2021.
“It feels great to be wearing the blue and a lot of people told me I look good in blue so I’m going to rock with it,” Davis said after the game.
In Davis’ first game with the Owls against the Bucknell Bison, he managed to run for 60 yards and break through for one touchdown.
In his first game with Vanderbilt in 2021, the San Francisco native only ran for 58 yards on ETSU without a touchdown.
Now, in his first game with his third team, it is fair to say Davis finally got the debut he was looking for.
Against Ball State, Davis ran for 112 yards and scored two out of Kentucky’s three offensive touchdowns, one in the closing six seconds of the game.
“I thought he had some really impressive runs, and not always the longer ones,” Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops said.
Davis’ longest run in the opener was 30 yards but, as Stoops said, Davis gained many yards when it seemed like the play was canned and going nowhere.
With this being Davis’ third program, it comes with some new challenges such as new offensive line, a new playbook, new coaches and more, but Davis was more appreciative of his new offensive pals, more than he was overwhelmed with the change.
“It feels good to be behind the line, I know they received a lot of criticism throughout last year, but like I said that’s last year,” Davis said.
With the next game on the horizon, Davis and the Wildcats look to work on their offensive “struggles” and improve for next week.
“I think that we are a really good team and we didn’t showcase that today,” he said.
Although the Cats ran away with a win by 30 points, Davis did not seem ecstatic with the opening victory.
“Truly I think we made some little mistakes here and there that could potentially become bigger problems down the line,” he said.
The Wildcats have a whole week to prepare for Eastern Kentucky, an in-state team which started its campaign with a 53-point loss to the Cincinnati Bearcats.
Davis looks to have another dominant offensive game and lead the Cats to a 2-0 start while improving off of week one’s display.
