Coach Joker Phillips shares his thoughts on the Kentucky vs. Florida game scheduled for Saturday at 7:00pm.
COACH PHILLIPS: Injury report: The two guys that are doubtful for this week, Moncell Allen who has a hamstring, and Stuart Hines, who both have played significant roles in the first three games offensively. Taiedo Smith is also questionable. We’ve got a couple guys that will be day-to-day will be (DeQuin) Evans, (Locke). He might explain to you guys he’s ready. And then (Avery) Williamson. Those three guys will be day-to-day, probably won’t practice until Wednesday.[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
I really don’t want to talk much about the past game, so we’ll get on to Florida. This is a huge challenge for us, playing in our first SEC game. One of the biggest challenges will be matching speed and matching intensity. And the thing we did last week is we kind of sleepwalked for about a quarter. You cannot, cannot come out and be not focused, not be intense, not be able to match their speed for the first quarter. If you do that, you could be down 14 points in a heartbeat or be down 21 points, and we’ve been there, been down 28 in the first quarter. If you don’t match the intensity, don’t match the excitement, if you allow the things that The Swamp brings to intimidate you, you could be down 28 points, no question about that.
We’ve got to really stay focused on what we have to do, how we have to be, how we have to show up in order to be able to match the things that we’ll have to match to play well down there in The Swamp.
This is what you come to Kentucky for. You come to play in big games. We sign up because we want to play in SEC games, and we have won on the road in the last three road trips. I don’t know who has the longest winning streak on the road in the SEC, but we’ve been on the road and have been focused and well prepared and did it for 60 minutes. But this is a huge challenge for us, but that’s what we signed up for. That’s why we signed up to play at Kentucky, to play in these type of games.
Video credit Courier-Journal.
