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Half empty or half full?

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LEXINGTON - Is your glass half full or half empty when it comes to University of Kentucky football?

That may be an unfair question as we sit here today because our minds are still fresh off the sting of seeing the Wildcats blow winnable football games at home in back to back weeks " 42-38 to Georgia on Nov. 8 and then 31-24 to the Vanderbilt Commodores on Saturday.

But try to step back a second and look at the big picture. The half empty people look at those two losses and pull their hair out thinking, "My gosh, look how close this Kentucky team was to 8-3 and a potential New Year's Day bowl game?"

That would be the Wildcats' record had they beaten Georgia and Vanderbilt. Had they done that, Kentucky would be all but assured of an Outback Bowl berth.

Instead, the Wildcats are 6-5 overall and 2-5 in the SEC going into their regular-season finale Nov. 29 at Tennessee. With a loss in Knoxville, it's all but a lock that Kentucky will be headed to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, La., on Dec. 28, probably against Nebraska or Colorado.

An official from the Independence Bowl passed around a promotional flyer from that bowl game to the media at Saturday's UK-Vandy game and the best I can tell, the tourism highlights of Shreveport are a Hilton Hotel with 24-hour room service and a dozen Regal cinemas.

With an upset of the Vols (my half empty side says, don't count on that), Kentucky could still be in the running for the Peach and Liberty bowls.

Imagine yourself as a half full glass person and consider this: Look how close Kentucky is to 4-7 and no bowl? That would be the Wildcats' record had they not escaped with victories against Arkansas (21-20) and Mississippi State (14-13).

If it's half full

And if you're a glass half full person, you realize that going to a bowl, any bowl, is extremely important, especially to a team with as many young players as the Wildcats. Bowl eligible teams get as much as a month, sometimes more, of practice that non-bowl teams don't.

All coaches will tell you that's a tremendous advantage. It's like an extra spring practice. It allows coaches the chance to both prepare for a bowl game and also to look ahead in a hands-on way to next season with the underclassmen.

UK's pending bowl invitation also marks the first time the Wildcats have gone to three consecutive bowls since the early 50's, though, granted, there are more bowl games now than there were then. Still, it's something nice to hang your hat on.

And, ask yourself this: Going into this season, if you had been told that this Kentucky team would lose multi-talented, athletic quarterback Curtis Pulley before the season started (to disciplinary reasons, and to that I say, good riddance), lose senior wide receiver Dicky Lyons four and a half games into the season (knee) and their best running back, Derrick Locke (knee), a week later, what would you have said were the odds on the Wildcats going to a bowl?

Had Kentucky had any of those three, let alone all of them, throughout this season, I feel sure the Wildcats would have at least one more win. Think about what would have happened had Pulley kept his head straight and played quarterback " he's like a Randall Cobb with experience - and had Cobb at Pulley's disposal as a receiver?

It all falls into the "what if" category that moves you towards the half empty side of things.

Passing game lacking

A few weeks ago I urged UK coach Rich Brooks to bench ineffective starting quarterback Mike Hartline and move Cobb from wide receiver to quarterback. Brooks did so, starting with the game at Mississippi State on Nov. 1.

And I still believe that was the right move to make, although the change has been a mixed bag for Kentucky. Cobb doesn't throw the ball as accurately at this point (though Hartline wasn't exactly John Elway) as I'd hoped, and " as all UK fans feared " the change also meant that the Wildcats have no wide receivers that I would even rate as fair.

Many UK fans have been clamoring for Brooks and offensive coordinator Joker Phillips to open up the passing game and try more throws down the field. Here's the rub: Cobb's receivers are doing virtually nothing to get open. I looked hard at UK's passing game against Vanderbilt Saturday, in the rare cases that the UK offense had the ball, and I saw a group of receivers that have no ability whatsoever to gain any separation from defenders.

The Kentucky wideouts might as well have been trying to elude the Vandy cornerbacks in a phone booth (for the younger readers, phone booths are smallish buildings we used to have before cell phones).

That's one reason for some of Cobb's interceptions: He's trying to ride too fine a line on some of his throws simply because his receivers are not open.

It's extremely disappointing and a source of great concern looking to the future that the young Kentucky receivers have not improved any more than they have.

I hope that Frankfort High graduate andUK freshman wideout E.J. Fields is not worried about falling behind his peers in the team's receiving corps while he redshirts this season. Trust me, Fields should be right up to speed with the others when practice starts for 2009 this August, with four years of eligibility to look forward to.

Cobb back at receiver

The UK picture at wide receiver also makes me realize that in the long term, looking to next season and beyond, the team may have to move Cobb back to receiver, where he surely will make his eventual living in the NFL regardless of how long he's a quarterback in college.

The problem with my plan is that in order to move Cobb to receiver and improve the team, we'll have to hope that Carmel, Ind., High quarterback Morgan Newton follows through on his verbal commitment to the Wildcats and is good enough to come here next season and start at quarterback as a true freshman.

I'm a little skeptical about that plan for the obvious reason that the SEC can be a brutal place for a freshman quarterback, along with the fact that Brooks and staff are very reluctant to use a true freshman at that position of responsibility. But from what I hear, Newton could be an exception.

Kentucky also has a commitment from a standout prep quarterback in Texas, Ryan Mossakowski, but he recently had shoulder surgery and is counting on redshirting at UK this coming season.

But, back to the present: With the problems at receiver, Kentucky's offense has been dependent on the quick, fast, and durable feet of Cobb at quarterback.

And while the offense has clearly improved because of Cobb's presence in the backfield, it hasn't been enough to prevent two straight defeats, though it might have been if it wasn't for the inexplicable downturn of the Wildcats' defense these past two weekends.

Where's the defense?

No one is sure why that has happened. It's one thing for an athletic offense like Georgia to run Kentucky ragged, but there's no excuse for Vanderbilt to roll up 361 yards of offense on the Wildcats, including 145 yards rushing by quarterback Chris Nickson.

The other issue that's been disconcerting pretty much all season for Kentucky is the Wildcats' propensity to sleep walk through the first quarter or two of most every game. You could argue that that single factor " I can't emphasize enough, more than ANYTHING else " has cost Kentucky these last two games, and probably cost the Wildcats the South Carolina game as well.

And no one knows why the Wildcats cannot seem to come out ready to play. If you counted just the second half, Kentucky would be a top 25 team.

Brooks says the problem is his fault, and that's nice, noble, generous, of him to say and it's true, but it's a little too simple and it doesn't solve the problem.

When we asked Joker Phillips about that issue Saturday night after the Vandy loss, Phillips summed it up in a hit-the-nail-on-the-head way and said: "You know what? We're not a very mature football team. We tried a couple of different things in warmups tonight " we tried to play fast in warmups and get in their faces " and we still came out sleep walking."

And Phillips said the coaches tried to motivate the underclassmen this week by trotting out Kentucky's 21 seniors to talk to the team about their experience here these last four years or so. These same seniors were playing their last game at Commonwealth Stadium Saturday.

"You put the seniors in front of them and say, "Just tell us about your UK experience,' and the seniors poured their hearts out and told the others how important this game was to them," Phillips said. "But it's got to be important to everybody, you know? It's got to be important if you're a freshman, sophomore or junior, too. It's got to be as important to them as it is to Tony Dixon, Gary Williams and the other seniors."

Phillips shook his head and added, "It's a mystery to me."

And more than a little frustrating to all who wear blue and white and all who cheer for blue and white.
"It's especially frustrating at the position (offense) that I coach," Phillips said. "I'm really frustrated we're not playing better. I think that we've practiced a little better. We've improved. But it's not showing on Saturday. We're still dropping balls ... we're still having trouble getting lined up."

Leadership lacking

In retrospect, Phillips said this Kentucky team misses last year's stars, guys like Andre Woodson, Steve Johnson, Keenan Burton, Jacob Tamme, Rafael Little and Wesley Woodyard, even more than we all thought they would.

"And it's not somuch their ability," Phillips said of those guys, "it's their leadership that is the most important thing that we've lost. We've lost Andre Woodson grabbing somebody by their throat and telling them, "THIS is how we do things. THISis how we prepare. Here's how you prepare your mind to play.'

"Physically I think we're headed in the right direction," Phillips added. "But mentally ... we've got to get our guys to prepare mentally. We don't have a Steve Johnson, a Keenan Burton or an Andre Woodson in our room right now. We don't have a Dicky Lyons in our room.

"We've got to find somebody who's willing to do that."

Before it's too late.

Before the bus leaves for Shreveport.