KSR Today: Mizzou Week; Basketball Leftovers; Halloween, Too

Good morning. We can go in a few different directions to begin our conversation today.

I could start with how Saturday’s performance in Knoxville drained a lot of the positive energy from Kentucky Football considering the Wildcats scored only six points with 90 passing yards against one of the worst pass defenses in college football. We could talk about losing 44 to 6 over this fresh cup of coffee, but who wants to look back on that hot bag of garbage on a Monday morning? Not me. It already ruined Saturday night and most of Sunday.

We could talk about Halloween and our favorite candies, or maybe the costume you wore to parties or plan to where tonight around the neighborhood. I was too busy following UK Athletics to celebrate this year, so I don’t have a lot to add to that conversation. My social media friends looked like they had a good weekend though and I hope everyone enjoys trick-or-treating tonight. Happy Halloween to you and yours.

There is also Kentucky Basketball’s first action against another team in last night’s preseason exhibition. We should certainly go over how the game played out since it’s so fresh and many of you missed it for other Sunday night things.

But first, let’s start with “getting back to work” on this Monday of Mizzou Week for Kentucky Football because it’s important to fix all that went wrong before things get worse.

Mondays with Mark coming up at lunch

Now that he’s had two sleeps to cool off and a whole Sunday to review the film from Knoxville, Mark Stoops will take questions about his team’s poor effort against Tennessee during his weekly press conference in Lexington. Stoops also has another road game to preview, this time to Missouri where he and Kentucky will once again fight the pressures of “don’t let one loss turn into two,” unfortunately a regular occurrence on Stoops’ watch.

You can hear Stoops’ Monday comments over on the KSR YouTube page during your lunch break. He’ll be back in front of a microphone tonight for his weekly call-in radio show with Tom Leach.

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Hoping for Chris Rodriguez and DeAndre Square on the new depth chart

Moments before Mark Stoops goes live in front of a hot mic, someone in Kentucky Football’s building will hit publish on this week’s updated depth chart. Once the new two-deep comes out publicly, running back and linebacker depth could be an indicator of the severity of the injuries to Chris Rodriguez and DeAndre Square before Stoops addresses the team’s health in his Monday presser. Let’s hope for positive news.

Kentucky dropped from the AP Poll, still in the Coaches Top 25

You’ll have to use the AFCA Coaches Poll if you want to continue referring to Kentucky Football as a top-25 team because only the coaches included the Wildcats in this week’s updated rankings. In their poll, Kentucky dropped seven spots from No. 17 to No. 24 with the loss in Knoxville.

In the AP Poll, voters said goodbye to Kentucky as the ‘Cats accumulated the 27th-most votes in the process. Tennessee moved into a tie with Ohio State for second behind Georgia, setting up No. 1 versus co-No. 2 this weekend.

AP Top 10 (Week 10)
1. Georgia
2. Ohio State
2. Tennessee
4. Michigan
5. Clemson
6. Alabama
7. TCU
8. Oregon
9. USC
10. UCLA

See the full 25.

Kentucky giving a couple of points in CoMo

When oddsmakers dropped the first point spread for Kentucky’s upcoming trip to Mizzou, the Wildcats were giving up two points as a road favorite. The number is now 2.5 in a lot of books.

The total on the game opened at 46.5 points.

Vanderbilt game time to be announced

Also on today’s busy schedule, at around noon, the Southeastern Conference will release the TV time slots for all of the league’s football games on Saturday, November 12. For Kentucky, that’s Vanderbilt and the next home game once the ‘Cats return from Mizzou, hopefully with a win.

A noon start is likely, but selfishly, I’d prefer a late one because I have a noon flight to a Miami/Key West honeymoon that day. We’ll find out for sure right around the time Stoops gets done talking in Lexington.

Kentucky Basketball beat Missouri Western State, 56-38

Moving on to the other big sport on campus, Kentucky Basketball’s first home exhibition game of the new season was last night in Rupp Arena, where John Calipari’s Wildcats hosted Missouri Western for a 40-minute exhibition game. In the end, Kentucky scored only 56 points in the 18-point win over its Division II opponent, carried by CJ Fredrick‘s team-high 15 points on 4-of-6 shooting from 3-point range.

Beyond Fredrick, everyone else shot 3-of-16 from outside in a game that was closer than anyone imagined. It was an eight-point game at halftime, a nine-point game with nine minutes to go, and the Cats were outrebounded the entire night, 36-35.

More stats from the low-scoring contest:

Sahvir Wheeler reinjured his knee

With 10 minutes to go, Kentucky point guard Sahvir Wheeler suffered a right leg injury beneath Kentucky’s basket that kept him on the floor for a few minutes and eventually off to the locker room for the rest of the night. After the game, John Calipari said it was the same knee that kept Wheeler from playing in the Blue-White game and that Wheeler “twisted it.” Beyond that, Calipari did not have an update or any specific details to share about Wheeler’s knee or timetable for a return.

Whatever’s going on, we hope Wheeler is back in a timely manner.

Highlights from the game

If you missed last night’s game or simply want a quick catch-up this morning, KY Wildcats TV packaged up the top plays of the game in one highlight reel:

John Calipari’s Postgame Press Conference

If you missed last night’s press conference and listening to John Calipari is something you want to do with your Monday morning, Calipari’s entire press conference is embedded below.

Some of Kentucky’s players took questions following the win, too:

Watch the latest John Calipari press conference on the KSR YouTube Channel.

KSR’s Rapid Reaction to the game

More video! Jack Pilgrim, Zack Geoghegan and I stayed up late to share our initial thoughts on Kentucky’s performance in a new Rapid Reaction video for KSR’s YouTube channel. Watch, like and subscribe, please and thank you.

Louisville almost won its exhibition game, but didn’t

The Kenny Payne era of Louisville Basketball got off to a rocky start on Sunday with the Cards’ home loss to Lenoir-Rhyne University, a private Lutheran school that competes in Division II out of Hickory, North Carolina. Last year, Lenoir-Rhyne lost 15 games in the South Atlantic Conference and 18 games in total, but the Bears found a 57-47 win in the KFC Yum! Center in the debut exhibition of Payne’s head coaching career.

Louisville shot 29.2 percent from the field and scored only 19 points in the loss, the first of many losses to come in 2022-23. Luckily for UofL, this one didn’t count toward the actual record.

The KSR Football Podcast will discuss the loss to the Vols

Today in a special afternoon edition, the KSR Football Podcast will welcome Nick Roush back to the program for the first time in a couple of weeks to recap Kentucky’s abysmal effort against its southern rival on Saturday. However, this week’s broadcast is at 2 PM because the usual 7 PM time slot coincides with trick-or-treating, so tonight’s show will be pre-taped and streamed in its usual time slot on KSR’s YouTube page and however you consume audio podcasts.

I have a hunch this episode will be one Rich Scangarello shouldn’t listen to.

Coming up:

At 10 AM, Matt Jones and Ryan Lemond will welcome Shannon The Dude back from his vacation for a new two-hour episode of Kentucky Sports Radio. They’ll have takeaways from both games over the weekend and Ryan Lemond’s newfound fame around college football as a surrender cobra.

Here on the KSR website, Adam Luckett will have a new Monday Huddle to lead off the busy day of all of the aforementioned football items. We’ll have more from last night’s basketball exhibition, too.

Go Cats and Happy Halloween.

Here are some costumes from last night’s game: