The House of Blue

A few rather quick notes today:

###The injury front on the defensive side didn't get any better today: Martavius Neloms, Ashely Lowery and Mikie Benton are out for this week, meaning Kentucky will start true freshmen safeties Daron and Zack Blaylock. Cody Quinn will also start at CB. Cartier Rice is the only experienced guy back there.

"We'll start two true freshmen in the back end at safety in the Blaylock twins, a freshman at corner in Cody Quinn and a veteran in Cartier Rice," UK coach Joker Phillips said. "Line up and go play. One of the things you get excited about is watching how these kids prepare and the excitement level those guys have. All of them are so shy and calm it's hard to get any type of read on them. Hopefully they'll be fine."

###Kentucky will travel 30 players on the defensive side of the ball to Arkansas. 23 of those players are freshmen and sophomores. Let that sink in for a moment.

###Through all the injuries and difficult first half of the season, Phillips has mostly maintained his sense of humor about it all. His reason: "What am I going to do? You've got to," Phillips said. "You get excited for those guys because they all came here to play. I don't know if they came to play this soon but they have to. Hey, just go out there and play. Let them go. I've always taken the attitude of next man up and we'll go into this one with the same attitude. (The veterans) get behind the young guys. They know how hard they work. They'll rally together.

"That's why I'm not scared, because they don't know what they're getting into. They shouldn't have to be playing at this time of their career but they are and they're excited. I'm sure they'll be a little nervous."

###The daily Jalen Whitlow update: "He's doing better," Phillips said. "Today he got probably 90 percent of the snaps and every rep he can get in practice is really helpful for him. In the two-minute (drill) today he took a sack with about 20 seconds left so that was a great time to stop what we were doing and get it corrected. Get it out of your hand. We've taken 11 sacks since Max has been out and out line is doing a good job. We got beat a couple of times against South Carolina but after that I don't know if there's been many times our offensive line has gotten whipped."

###Phillips' biggest concern defensively is the communication in the secondary, as the Blaylock kids will be responsible for coordinating a lot of that: "The linebackers communicate to the front seven and it's hard to put a corner in charge of the back end," Phillips said. "The safety is in charge of making a lot of the calls in back end. We'll simplify some things but we also have to do enough to try and take away from what Arkansas will do in the passing game."

###Asked whether they expect Arkansas to take more deep shots in the passing game because of UK's injury situation, Phillips said of course they expect a team that throws the ball really well to try and use that to their advantage: "I think we'll see more balls in the air, whether they're deep or intermediate who knows, but I think we'll see more balls in the air," Phillips said. "We have to do a good job of disrupting the passes and timing of the quarterback up front. We have to get our hands up. I can't remember the last time we knocked down a pass. It's got to be a team effort on defense."