Auburn Tigers Prepare for Tough Kentucky Defense

The Auburn Tigers seek their first power conference win this season, but they need to get past a tough Kentucky defense

The Auburn Tigers know they have a tough task with Mark Stoops and Kentucky's defense / Jake Crandall/ Advertiser / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

The Auburn Tigers (2-5, 0-4 SEC) seek their first SEC win of the season when they head to Lexington to take on the Kentucky Wildcats (3-4, 1-3 SEC) on Saturday.

Auburn head coach Hugh Freeze knows his team will be in for a challenge, proclaiming Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops as one of the nation’s best.

Kentucky heavily lags on offense; they average the fewest points per game in the conference (20.4). However, they have the fourth-best defense overall in the SEC allowing just 286.3 yards of total offense per game. They allow 19.3 points per game – removed the 48 points allowed to Florida on Saturday and they allowed just 14.5 points per game.

They've played up to their compeititon - they beat Ole Miss and gave Georgia a major scare.

Freeze attributes Kentucky’s success to head coach Mark Stoops for getting the most out of his players.

“Coach Stoops, I think, is one of the best in the business,” Freeze said. “I think he gets more out of his team year in and year out than most coaches do, so I give him a lot of credit.”

The Wildcats come into this contest after falling 48-20 to the Florida Gators on the road, their worst loss of the season. They gave up 197 yards on the ground, an unusually high number as they have held opponents to an average of 104.7 rushing yards per game.

However, Freeze predicts they’ll be more in character this week.

Kentucky has been successful stopping the run this season due to dominant play from its defensive front. Freeze believes this unit has future NFL talent on it and will give the Tigers one of the tougher tests they have had.

“This defensive front, it starts there,” Freeze said. “They’re the real deal. Zero (Deone Walker) is probably a top 15 pick in the (NFL) Draft. Eight (Octavious Oxendine) is pretty dang salty, too. The backers are really, really talented. They can run in the secondary. It’s one of the better defenses we’ve seen.”

Freeze and company will need to have its best offensive game plan yet in order to pull off the upset on the road. The Tigers are certainly capable of outperforming Kentucky on offense. They average 102 more total yards of offense each game. Despite troubles finding the end zone, they also average more than a score per game than Kentucky. 

The thing is so far, it hasn’t translated to a success against power conferences this season.