The Gators celebrate their season-opening win over Charleston Southern on Saturday night at the Swamp. (Photo: Jay Metz/UAA Communications)
SEC Season Here Again ... And So is Talk About Streak
Monday, September 3, 2018 | Football, Chris Harry
Everyone on the Florida sidelines was in agreement on those two facts Saturday after the Gators demolished an FCS opponent 53-6 to kick off the 2018 season in front of an appreciative home crowd.
"It was Charleston Southern," junior defensive back Chauncey Gardner-Johnson said Monday.
And that is the exactly the kind of perspective UF's players should have taken from the first game of Coach Dan Mullen's tenure as head coach. They needed such a tune up to stretch their legs in Mullen's system and give the folks at Spurrier/Florida Field something to get excited about.
That said, for context's sake, it's worth mentioning that Coach Jim McElwain's first game as UF coach in 2015 was a 61-13 obliteration of New Mexico State, another opponent grossly overmatched, in a game the Gators racked up 606 yards. The scoring and offensive output of that one wasn't exactly a foreshadow of things to come.
Which is why what happened against Charleston Southern needs to be probably filed away as the Gators (1-0) turn their attention to Saturday night's Southeastern Conference opener against Kentucky (1-0) at the "Swamp." UF won't be bigger, faster and stronger than UK across the board. And even given the Gators' mastery of the series over the last three-plus decades, the Wildcats will provide considerable pushback. Maybe more so because of that mastery.
"They understand that. They know who we're playing. We'll talk about it being an SEC game and that makes it different," Mullen said Monday. "We've got to concentrate on ourselves. I do like our guys having confidence in what we did. We also have to understand that we have to become a lot better, and not because Kentucky is a lot better than Charleston Southern. We have to be a lot better if we want to be a good football team."
Florida has defeated Kentucky 31 straight games, the longest active winning streak by one team over another in all of college football. The run began in 1987 and was extended last year when the Gators erased a 13-point fourth-quarter deficit to escape Lexington with a 28-27 victory, making for the fourth-longest streak for one Division I team over another in NCAA history.
"It'll be 32 after Saturday," Gardner-Johnson said.
Confidence is a good thing, but it better be backed by preparation.
CHARTING THE GATORS
UF's 31-game winning streak over Kentucky stands as the longest active winning streak for one program over another in FBS classification, and the fourth-longest in NCAA Division I history. A victory Saturday would push the Gators into a tie for the third-longest. Here are the top eight.
| Streak | Team vs Team | Years |
| 43 | Notre Dame over Navy | 1964-2006 |
| 36 | Nebraska over Kansas | 1969-2004 |
| 32 | Oklahoma over Kansas State | 1937-68 |
| 31 | Florida over Kentucky | 1987-present |
| 29 | Nebraska over Kansas State | 1969-97 |
| 28 | Texas over Rice | 1966-1993 |
| 26 | Syracuse over Hobart | 1906-31 |
| Tennessee over Kentucky | 1985-2010 |
The Cats gave the Gators all they could handle last season and return 15 starters from '17. Four of them are on the offensive line that paved the way for All-SEC tailback Benny Snell to rush for 1,333 yards and a league-best 19 touchdowns. He had 20 carries for 125 yards and two scores in UK's 35-20 season-opening defeat of Central Michigan. UF may again be without linebacker David Reese, its leading tackler in 2017, who missed the opener with an ankle injury. His status will be determined later in the week.
As far as the preparation goes, Mullen will be further along than most first-year coaches, at least with this particular opponent. Mullen came to UF by way of Mississippi State, where one of the Bulldogs' permanent cross-division SEC foes was Kentucky. This will be his 10th straight year facing the Wildcats. He's 8-1 in those matchups.
But what's happened in the past between Mississippi State and Kentucky has as much to do with this game as what's happened in the past with Florida and Kentucky, according to Mullen.
"I don't know what affect that has on this week's game. It's going to be two good teams going out to play each other. Just go play," Mullen said. "I imagine, one day, the streak will be broken. That's just the nature of sports. But I'm confident. To me, we want to go win the game because it's our SEC opener. That's got to be the whole focus, and not worry about anything else. I try not to think about it in those terms, because it really has no affect on us winning or losing the game this year."
In Lexington, UK coach Mark Stoops is taking an only slightly different tact. The streak is addressed, then the Cats move on.
"I think I never dance around that," Stoops said. "It is important to us for that reason, but we can't focus on it for that reason. We need to focus on it because it's this year. It's an SEC team, it's in the East and we want to win some football games. They're next on the schedule, and that's truthfully what it is about. These guys cannot worry about 30-some years and all that. They really can't. Winning is important to our team each and every week, and that's the approach we'll have.
As for the aforementioned familiarity between the two programs and coaches, it works both ways.
"I think both teams are familiar [with each other]," Mullen said. "They're very familiar with personnel here from playing [Florida] every single year. And they're familiar schematically [with UF's offensive system], with that being a team that I've played every year for the last nine years as a head coach."
But like Mullen said, a lot of what the Gators will talk about this week will focus on themselves. Upon further review of the Charleston Southern game, UF saw it has plenty of work to do when it comes to blocking in the running game, despite 203 yards on the ground. Third-year sophomore quarterback Feleipe Franks had his finest game as a collegian, with a career-high five touchdown passes, but he missed a few reads. Defensively, the Gators missed some tackles, especially in the second half when they went almost exclusively with reserves.
Those are all things that relate to the 2018 matchup against Kentucky, as opposed to anything about the winning streak.
"I'm worried about this year," said Franks, who last year was benched at Kentucky in favor of veteran Luke Del Rio, only to reclaim the job a week later when Del Rio suffered a season-ending shoulder injury. "There's a lot more room to grow, a lot of work to do, not only just at my position. We've got so much more room to grow and, like I said [after the CSU game] we're just tapping into our potential, just scratching the surface. We'll go in the film room and get it watched up, get it coached up, and kind of go from there and get ready for Kentucky."
It's SEC time.
"They're coming in with a chip on their shoulder that they can beat us," Gardner-Johnson said. "At the end of the day, our team is capable, and we know what's going to happen Saturday. We'll just got to go out there and play, execute our game plan and just do what we've got to do."
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