Greetings, BBN!

As we wait for the start of the 2022 Kentucky Wildcats football season, now’s a great time to look at the upcoming schedule and scout the opponents. This week we look at Week 5 as Kentucky faces the Ole Miss Rebels in their second SEC game.

Ole Miss

• When: October 1st
• Where: Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, Oxford, Mississippi
• All-Time Series: Ole Miss leads 28-14-1

This is one of the most exciting games on Kentucky’s schedule and a very special rarity for the ‘Cats. UK has not played Ole Miss in Oxford for a road game since a 42-35 loss in 2010.

That means that while both teams play in the SEC, if you’re a 21-year-old college senior getting ready to watch Kentucky take snaps on Ole Miss’s field and like seeing the various and sundry stadiums of the South, it’d be your first time since you were a 9-year-old eating Rice Krispies while watching Curious George on PBS.

So yeah, it’s been a while, and of course it’s been even longer since UK’s left Oxford with a win: 1978.

Why does it always have to be like five decades since Kentucky’s won somewhere? I don’t know, but it’s all about opportunity. This season, they can further add to their belt of achievements during the Stoops Era of Breaking Down Doors with a win in Oxford against Lane Kiffin and the Rebels, who are coming off a Sugar Bowl berth and 10-win season.

Matt Corral is gone, but Kiffin’s team doesn’t seem to have lost momentum this offseason thanks to the transfer portal. Both teams might be entering this game ranked and 4-0, so it could be a collision course of two really great teams ready for great seasons.

Prediction: Ole Miss is really good and is at home. Kentucky can come into this stadium behind Will Levis’s NFL arm and win a shootout if they give it their all and make no mistakes, and I’m going to predict that they do because I mean why not?

UK wins 35-34.