It’s make or break time for Mark Stoops and the Kentucky Wildcats. For the last two seasons, Kentucky has had a hot start and two wins against conference opponents before the wheels fell off in mid-October. Kentucky will be hard-pressed to match that hot start against its College Football Week 1 opponent, the Southern Miss Golden Eagles. Southern Miss had one of the best offenses in the country last season and almost toppled Nebraska. Kentucky will have to be careful in this one.
Watch this regular season Week 1 matchup live on Saturday, September 3, 2016, at 7:30 p.m. ET at Commonwealth Stadium. This game will be broadcast on ESPNU.
College Football Odds at BookMaker.eu
Southern Miss +6
Kentucky -6
Over/Under 63.5
Odds Analysis
Bets have been trickling in on Southern Miss and the Golden Eagles have slowly been moving from a 7-point favorite to a 6-point favorite over the last few weeks. The over/under has steadily risen since it opened at 60 a few weeks ago and may go even higher than 63.5 before kickoff.
Matchup to Watch
This game has all the trappings of a shoot-out and the winner might be the team whose quarterback performs the best. Patrick Towles left to join BC in the offseason, informally handing the reins of the team to Drew Barker. Barker is the highest recruited quarterback to end up in Lexington since Tim Couch arrived on campus almost two decades ago, but didn’t impress in spot duty in 2015. His maturation is crucial to the Wildcats’ chances of not only beating Southern Miss, but making a bowl as well.
No one expected Nick Mullens to have the year he had last season. Mullens was a marginal quarterback in 2014 and under his watch, the Golden Eagles went just 3-9 and scored 19.0 points per game. 2015 was a completely different story though and he ended up throwing for almost 4500 yards as Southern Miss doubled its points per game average. He has yet to knock off a top tier opponent but is surely savoring the chance of upsetting Kentucky.
Look-ahead Situation
This game is in a dangerous spot for Kentucky. Whereas Southern Miss has minnows like Savannah State and Troy in the following weeks, the Wildcats are surely looking ahead to playing Florida in The Swamp the following week. It’s been three decades since Kentucky was able to defeat Florida and the Wildcats have been oh so close in each of the past two seasons. Southern Miss isn’t a team to sleep on though and if Kentucky looks too far past, it’s going to get upset.
Free ATS Pick
Mark Stoops has been able to recruit at Kentucky and has defeated every opponent it faced in September not named Florida the past two seasons. His initial recruits are now seniors and this is the time where his initial work should start paying dividends for the Wildcats.
If Southern Miss still had Todd Monken as its head coach, the Golden Eagles would be a popular pick to pull off an upset but no one is quite sure just what to expect from new coach Jay Hopson. Hopson wasn’t part of Monken’s staff and was instead hired from Alcorn State after a successful tenure there. He’s a defensive coach and seems content to keep the offense as it was under Monken, but he is a wild card at this stage.
This feels like one of those games that’s close for a half before the bigger school slowly starts to pull away. Southern Miss has a lot of talent for a mid-major team but Kentucky knows how badly it needs to win this one if it wants to make its first bowl since 2010. As long as Barker doesn’t turn the ball over, the Wildcats will get the cover on their home turf.
College Football Odds: Wildcats 36, Golden Eagles 25
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