Over the two most recent battles for the Governor's Cup, the combined tally has been Kentucky 101, Louisville 23.
In games played in the venue where the 2021 UK-U of L football game will be contested — Cardinal Stadium — the Wildcats have an all-time winning record (6-5) over the Cardinals and have won the past two.
Kentucky will enter this year's game as an eight-win team (8-3) that produced a winning record in the Southeastern Conference (5-3). Louisville will enter the game as a six-win team (6-5) that broke even in the Atlantic Coast Conference (4-4).
Yet the oddsmakers have installed Scott Satterfield's Cardinals as anywhere from a 1 to 2.5 points favorite over Mark Stoops' Wildcats.
One suspects Stoops may have danced the jig when he heard that news.
In the renewal of a rivalry — interrupted last year by the coronavirus pandemic — in which the Cats have recently held the upper hand, it is nevertheless Kentucky that can enter the 2021 game legitimately feeling slighted.
"A good dose of our team, the past two (recruiting) classes haven't played Louisville," Stoops pointed out Monday at his weekly news conference at Kroger Field. "The rivalry needs to be introduced to a few of our players that haven't been exposed to it."
Stoops was asked how that "rivalry introduction" will be carried out?
"We'll show them some things," he said with a half-smirk.
One need not convene a "football geniuses panel" of Bill Belichick, Sean McVay and Lincoln Riley to ascertain what allowed Kentucky to whack Louisville 56-10 in 2018 and 45-13 in 2019.
The Wildcats were massively superior in interior-line play on both sides of the football.
In the prior two meetings between Cats and Cards, Kentucky has run for 11 touchdowns. On five of those scoring runs — jaunts of 7, 75, 6, 46 and 64 yards — the UK runner migrated to the end zone without ever being touched by a U of L defender.
On the other side of the ball, the Kentucky defense produced a combined 21 tackles for loss and eight quarterback sacks in its last two games vs. Louisville.
That's why for all the deserved attention that Malik Cunningham, Louisville's dynamic, dual-threat quarterback, will receive in the lead-in to Saturday night's game, the outcome will largely ride on whether U of L has closed the gaping gap in line play from the prior two times the teams played.
Stoops says Louisville "is better in all areas than they were the last time we played them."
There's no question that Cunningham is playing better at quarterback than he was leading into his prior starts vs. UK in 2018 and 2019.
The Montgomery, Ala., product is coming off an epic performance in U of L's 62-22 decimation of Duke. The 6-foot-1, 200-pound redshirt junior completed 18 of 25 passes for 303 yards and five touchdowns. Cunningham also ran for 224 yards and two scores as he lifted Louisville to bowl-eligibility.
"Playing exceptionally well and making people around him better," Stoops said of the Louisville QB.
After a 6-0 start raised expectations, Kentucky has wobbled in the second half of the season.
Beset by injuries to its starting front seven, the UK defense has been dissected by high-level quarterback play from Will Rogers and Hendon Hooker in losses to Mississippi State and Tennessee, respectively.
Except for a clunker in Starkville, the Kentucky offense has played well — other than the fact the Cats can't stop turning the ball over.
With UK at minus-13 in turnover margin for the season, only one team in all the FBS, Arizona (minus-15), is worse.
The defensive vulnerability to good quarterbacks and the offensive penchant for turnovers probably explains the lack of faith in Kentucky this week from the oddsmakers.
Part of what makes an intrastate rivalry consequential is the recruiting implications that accompany it.
Since Stoops assigned ace recruiter Vince Marrow to the commonwealth four recruiting cycles ago, the Wildcats have dominated the in-state recruiting wars.
From the 2019 signing class through the players currently verbally committed in the class of 2022, Kentucky has successfully wooed 21 in-state players, seven of them from Jefferson County.
Over the same time frame, U of L has gotten four in-state players, all from Jefferson County.
With what is considered a stellar in-state class of recruits available in 2023, this is not the time UK wants an on-the-field outcome that turns U of L into a more viable alternative for home-grown prospects.
"It is important," Stoops says of the recruiting implications of Saturday's game. "I don't think it's end-all, be-all, but it is important."
Kentucky will carry a 14-game win streak vs. non-league foes with it to The Ville.
Included are four straight victories over ACC opponents — the two regular-season blowouts of Louisville in 2018 and 2019; a victory over Virginia Tech in the 2019 Belk Bowl; and a win over then-No. 23 North Carolina State in the 2020 Gator Bowl.
Yet, facing a team that went 4-4 in the ACC this season, the Cats are deemed the underdog Saturday night.
One surmises that news filled Mark Stoops with an overflowing, Thanksgiving-week gratitude.
