One game at a time, you can chalk it up as coach-speak, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Funny things can happen to a team, a season, even a coaching staff with just one game. This is part one of a four part series on the change in UK’s football fortunes over the last three years concluding with a preview of the 09 season.
To many “the game” in 06 was the win over Georgia and to be fair that was probably the biggest but the turnaround came a week earlier. It was a SEC road game against Mississippi State and it played out as a game the Cats would typically lose. Cat fans had seen this one before, get out to a lead only to watch the other team make a comeback, a see-saw battle ensues with UK snatching defeat from the sure jaws of victory. Only this one would be different.
The Cats did get the lead and MSU did fight back to tie at halftime at 14 apiece. The second half played out as expected with UK taking another lead only to see MSU make a furious rally. With just over two minutes left Cat fans watched MSU score their second TD of the 4th quarter and pull within 3 at 34-31. That old familiar knot in the pit of the stomach began to tug as Cat fans across Big Blue Nation knew what was to come, an onsides kick recovery, a turnover of some strange sort, possibly even a phantom penalty that would cause our ultimate defeat.
Cat fans have seen some horrific endings over the years, so many we had grown numb to it and even expected it. That was the mindset that Brooks had worked so hard to rid his players of, and this day they did just that. No onsides recovery, no fluke penalty or turnover today, this day would end with a SEC road win, and a team that could look back and say here is where it began. It may not have looked like much at the time, surely not the turnaround win it can be viewed as today, but it was the first step as a team. That team would go on to great things, and what would Rich Brooks say about this victory? “We just took it one game at a time” what were you expecting him to say.
