By Keith Taylor
Special to NKyTribune
Charlotte was the cure for Kentucky.
The Wildcats got a win they desperately needed going into Saturday’s regular-season ending showdown against instate rival Louisville, ending a five-game losing streak with a 58-10 rout of Charlotte Saturday night at Commonwealth Stadium.
For Kentucky, the win was a big relief and came at the right time, especially a week after the Wildcats came up short in a 21-17 setback at Vanderbilt in their Southeastern Conference finale in Nashville. Kentucky (5-6) moved within one game of becoming bowl eligible for the first time in five years.
“It was obviously a much-needed win,” Kentucky coach Mark Stoops said. “Our players needed that. The past couple weeks, I felt like our team had been practicing (hard) and doing the right things to put ourselves in a position to win, but we just needed to play better and execute better.”
BOXSCORE: Kentucky 58, Charlotte 10
On a night when most of the attention centered on redshirt freshman quarterback Drew Barker, who was making his first collegiate start, the running backs grabbed the spotlight.
Anchored by Jojo Kemp and Stanley “Boom” Williams, Kentucky rushed for a season-high 415 yards and scored all six of its touchdowns on the ground. Kemp and Williams combined for 305 yards and five of the Wildcats’ six scores in the contest.
Kemp finished with 165 yards on 11 carries and three touchdowns while Williams had 140 yards and two scores, career-high performances for both running backs. Sihiem King added 91 yards on five totes and a touchdown.
“We had some good runs in the game,” Stoops said. “I thought we mixed it up pretty well.”
For Williams, he didn’t mind sharing the load with Kemp as they became the first Kentucky duo to rush for more than 100 yards since Derrick Locke and Randall Cobb accomplished the feat in 2010.
“It is always good to be able to have that 1-2 punch,” Williams said. “It was really good to see all of us running backs being productive while helping the offense.”
Prior to his performance, Kemp said the Wildcats stopped dwelling on the five-game slide and started focusing on their last two opponents.
“At the beginning of the week, we were going to start off the next two games 0-0,” Kemp said. “Now we’re 1-0 going into Louisville. We needed a confidence booster. Now we just need to go back to work and prepare for Louisville.”
As for Barker, he held his own after serving as a backup to Patrick Towles in Kentucky’s first 10 games. Barker was 16-for-29 for 129 yards and four of those completions went for 20 yards or more.
Although he was pleased with his own numbers, Barker enjoyed handing the ball off to his running backs just as much as his pass completions.
“It felt really good handing off to those guys and watching them go,” he said. “It’s awesome seeing them break out like that going into next week. It was definitely good.”
Barker admitted it wasn’t easy for the Wildcats to focus during the previous five weeks, but credited his teammates for staying together in the midst of adversity.
“A five-game skid is definitely hard on a team,” Barker said. “People could easily start pointing fingers in the locker room after each game, but we just stuck together and (we can) use this as a confidence booster against Louisville.”
Kentucky won’t have to look far for extra motivation after the Cardinals knocked the Wildcats out of the postseason with 44-40 victory last year in Louisville.
“We were in the same situation last year, and everybody on the team last year knows the feeling that we had,” Williams recalled. “We’re going to do what we have to do and give ourselves a chance to come out and win the game.”
Game tracker: Louisville at Kentucky, Saturday, noon. TV/Radio: SEC Network, 98.1 FM WBUL
Keith Taylor is a columnist and senior sports writer who covers University of Kentucky athletics for KyForward.com