This was hardly a surprise. The starting job at quarterback was his to lose entering the 2015 season. Despite some heated competition from the freshman, prior experience proved to be a difference maker at Kentucky. Patrick Towles will be the starting quarterback for the Wildcats, Mark Stoops announced Monday.
Towles beat out freshman Drew Barker, a prospect with loads of potential in the future for Kentucky. The competition appeared pretty even out of the spring, but Stoops will bank on experience at the college level in going with Towles.
As a sophomore in 2014, Towles led the Wildcats in passing with 2,718 yards and 14 touchdowns while completing 57.3 percent of his pass attempts. He was picked off nine times, but none of those interceptions came within the opponent’s 40-yard line (9 touchdowns, 0 interceptions thrown inside the opponent’s 40). He completed exactly half of his pass attempts in the same area of the field though, which leaves some room for improvement if Kentucky is going to pull an upset in SEC play this season.
Kentucky opens the 2015 season at home against Louisiana-Lafayette of the Sun Belt Conference. It is a game worthy of some upset alert recognition and is followed by SEC conference games against South Carolina, Florida and Missouri. If Kentucky gets off to a poor start and fails to produce on offense, Stoops may be pushed into a situation where he needs to make a chance and go with the younger arm before reaching a bowl game becomes an even more difficult uphill battle.