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[B]Kentucky head coach Joker Phillips[/B] spoke to the media today and delivered a message of hope for week 6 of the season.
COACH PHILLIPS: [COLOR=black]Qua Huzzie will be questionable for Saturday. Tomorrow he will have surgery on a ligament at the base of his thumb to get repaired, and we’ll see by Saturday how much pain he’s in. If he’s not in a lot of pain, he could possibly go on Saturday, but right now he will be questionable. [/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]The rest of the guys, Taiedo Smith will probably be out, Josh Gibbs should be back tomorrow and DeQuin Evans should be back tomorrow, but at this time Qua Huzzie is questionable and it will depend on how much pain he’s in on Thursday. [/COLOR]
At week No. 6, week opportunity No. 6 of the 12 guaranteed opportunities that we get, another big challenge. We do get to come back home for a three game stretch starting with Auburn. The thing that we have to do in preparing the guys (is) to prepare for a quarterback (Cameron Newton) who’s probably playing as good as anybody in the country at the position, big, strong, physical guy, one of the leading rushers not only in this conference but in the country. For some reason they did not run it last week. I guess they were holding him for this week. He only ran for one for 11, and anybody who sees that, it’s probably a sack. He’s a guy that they create open opportunities in the passing game for him with his ability to run because you have to pack the box so much and you have to come up to play the run. They do some play-action with him just stepping forward, which allowed them to hit a 90 something yard pass last week. So you’ve got to prepare for him.
The (Auburn) offensive line is really aggressive. I like our match up, up front with our defensive line. I think those guys are playing well for us up front.
Defensively, their defensive front gives you some problems. No. 90 (Nick Fairley) especially, he’s one of those guys that they’ve had in the past up front. But again, I like the way our offensive line has been competing, and I like the match ups.
The thing we have to do is make plays on the perimeter, and we also have to get [COLOR=black]Derrick Locke[/COLOR] started.
Special teams wise, we’ve just got to play sound fundamentals and make sure we get people on the ground and protect our punter, which was one of the things the reason why we went to this punt formation was to protect the punter. We thought we had some more people that could cover punts, we had skill guys and we had linebackers that could cover punts. The thing we have to do is make sure we’re punting the ball in the right direction and give these guys a chance to get downfield and cover lanes and get people on the ground.
We’ve given up three big returns in the punting game, which is unacceptable. Two have turned into touchdowns. We’ve got to do a better job in that area.
But with that, any questions?
Q. How are [COLOR=black]Randall Burden and Derrick Locke health wise?[/COLOR]
[COLOR=black]COACH PHILLIPS: Randall will practice tomorrow, so he’s fine. I didn’t mention him because of that. He’ll be fine. Randall Cobb will always be beat up on Saturday night, (Sunday), Monday, and about Tuesday or Wednesday[/COLOR] is when he starts getting going. He’ll be fine. I didn’t mention him, also. He’ll be a guy that will always be banged up and beat up until Tuesday or Wednesday.
Q. Auburn is a different team this year. How much of that is because of Cameron Newton? Has he been the guy that’s kind of transformed them from a 7 and 5 team to a top ten team?
COACH PHILLIPS: Well, they were playing really good at this time last year, also, when we went down there and beat them. They’re still playing well on offense. They are not throwing the ball the way they were last year. Actually they’re more of a quarterback run game this year than they were last year, He’s added that dimension to them. Last year they turned and handed it to the running backs. They didn’t run as much zone read, but he’s a different dimension and added a spark to them offensively.
Source: [URL=”http://www.ukathletics.com/sports/m-footbl/spec-rel/100410aab.html”]UKAthletics.com[/URL]
