Here is the good news for Kentucky: They’re 4-1, the “Power K” logo is back for Saturday’s game against LSU, and the Cats are hosting No. 10 LSU in a highly anticipated Saturday night showdown at Kroger Field. That’s all good.
The not-so-good news is that injuries are piling up. We won’t have the first availability report of the week until Wednesday night at 8:00 E.T., but the outlook doesn’t look great.
“We’ve dealt with some injuries as of late that aren’t, hopefully, season-ending, but that will
show up on the injury report tomorrow as definitely questionable for this next game, with the potential, too, to be out,” head coach Will Stein said Tuesday.
Linebacker is the position getting hit the hardest right now. Tavion Wallace hasn’t played since the game against South Alabama, while Alex Afari Jr. is ineligible. The latter of those players isn’t injured, but he isn’t available.
Antwan Smith, who filled in at linebacker, also got injured in the game at South Carolina.
“It’s thin,” Stein said of the linebacker position. “There’s no doubt about it. I mean, Grant (Godfrey) battled, Bo (Barnes) battled. We put Devin Smith in on the last play. The first play was a pop pass right over his head in overtime. So yeah, it’s scary. There’s no doubt about it.
“So we’re practicing other people, you know, guys that are down the line because there’s really nobody left, and we’ve got to find a way.”
Sounds like we should, at the very least, expect the linebacker position to be thin once again this week.
Running back Jason Patterson is also iffy after leaving the game in Columbia, while wide receiver DJ Miller did not play due to his own injury.
Saturday’s clash with the Tigers is already a massive challenge, and it likely will get more difficult once we see who is out this week.
