With about three minutes left in the first quarter and Kentucky’s offense plodding out of the gate, head coach Joker Phillips went with a rather rare approach to hit the alarm button and wake up his snoozing team. Following a false start penalty on fourth and 1, which followed three key drops in the first half, Phillips called timeout and gathered each and every one of his 100-plus players and coaches on the sideline and asked them to huddle at the 50-yard line. The message was clear and simple: Wake up, focus on the task at hand (Akron) and forget about next week’s Southeastern Conference opener with Florida.”We looked like we were sleepwalking during the warm-up, during the pregame,” Phillips said. “I challenged them before the game. You’ve got to play with intensity, you’ve got to play with excitement and you’ve got to play with passion. I didn’t see that out of us the first quarter. We didn’t do that.  I wanted to pull them up and give them a reminder of what we had just talked about in the locker room. … We cannot relax.  “And they will see next week, you can’t relax. You play like that, like we did in this quarter next week, you’ll be down two or three touchdowns. We cannot relax and not play with excitement, not play with passion, not play with enthusiasm.” UK responded to its coach, scoring 44 unanswered points until a late Akron touchdown for a 47-10 rout of the Zips at Commonwealth Stadium. With the win, UK opened the season 3-0 for the fourth time in the last 10 years, setting up a huge and much-anticipated matchup with the Florida Gators next week in Gainesville, Fla.”I wasn’t thinking about them,” Phillips said. “We talk about playing, living in the moment, and the moment was playing Akron.”  The talk leading up to next week’s game will likely be about the slow-to-start Gators. Through three games, Florida has been a shell of its former Bowl Championship Series-winning self, struggling in wins over Miami (Ohio), South Florida and Tennessee. Whatever. Florida is Florida. It’s the same team that has beaten UK 23 straight years. Florida is not the point for Kentucky next week.The key for next week heading into the game is that UK has done all it can in an obviously very manageable non-conference schedule. The Cats beat Louisville at their rivals’ newly renovated house and easily dispatched Western Kentucky and Akron. Quarterback Mike Hartline, often questioned throughout his career, has played at an All-SEC caliber level through the first three games of the season, throwing for 680 yards on 54-of-75 passing with five scores and zero interceptions (he’s thrown 106 straight passes dating back to last year without throwing a pick). Hartline entered the week with the 13th-best passer rating in the country. That should only increase after Saturday’s cruise.Randall Cobb had a pedestrian game by his standards because of a case of heartburn, but everybody, Florida included, knows what to expect from him next week. Whether teams punt to him or not, he’s one of those guys that always have to be accounted for. That presence alone UK has not had for some time. And tailback Derrick Locke has been outstanding (372 yards on 61 carries and five touchdowns), becoming the first player to rush for three straight 100-yard games since Rafael Little in 2007 after churning out a career-high 166 yards against the Zips.Philips said they have been stressing to Locke about “hugging” his blocks, taking on tacklers one-on-one and “stepping on their toes.””If he hugs the block, is really close to the block, it’s harder for the defender to get off the blocker in time,” Phillips said. “He has worked really, really hard on that aspect of his game. I asked him to go – I’m not sure if he has done it, but I asked him to go watch Mark Ingram at Alabama. (He) does a real good job of pressing the line of scrimmage and hugging his blocks and coming off the heels of the blocker. (Ingram) steps on the heels of the blocker, therefore, the defender can’t get off in time to make the play.”Locke listened to his coach’s advice and watched Ingram Saturday. The results were pretty evident in the UK win.”I respect his game,” Locke said. “I watched him today. It was awesome. I have to give him his respect. He stepped on toes and did exactly what he needed to do – make guys miss. That’s something I’ve got to develop and do more of. If I want to be the back I want to be, I’ve got to step on people’s toes and make them miss.”With the exception of a handful of missed tackles in the first two games, a lull in Saturday’s first quarter and some missed field goals, what else as a fan can you ask for? In the past, UK would have found a way to make one of the last two games close (see Middle Tennessee State in 2008 or Louisiana-Monroe in 2006). Even the most cynic of pessimists has to be somewhat happy through the first three games.”We did get some questions answered,” said Phillips, who knocked on the table when he was reminded that Kentucky had yet to turn the ball over this season.Entering Saturday’s game, it was fair to criticize the Kentucky rush defense. Louisville and Western Kentucky had combined to gash the defense for 377 yards in the first two games.Against Akron, after a week full of tackling drills and an emphasis on gang tackling, those issues were resolved. UK wrapped up at the line of scrimmage and held the Zips to 67 rushing yards and 172 total offensive yards.”We had a lot of people going to the football, a lot of guys attacking the run,” defensive coordinator Steve Brown said. “I think we did an excellent job of reading our keys and playing assignment football really consistently.”DeQuin Evans answered a week full of scrutiny with a solid performance Saturday. After failing to record a tackle in the season’s first two games, Evans promptly answered with a game-opening tackle at the line of scrimmage. He finished with three tackles and a sack.The Cats also held Akron quarterback Patrick Nicely to just 57 yards on 4-of-19 passing.”I just wanted to see them play 60 minutes consistently,” Brown said. “I think that was compliment to them. We stayed on them as coaches and they stayed on each other as players. They said, ‘Listen, we’re not going to let up no matter who is in the game, no matter who is playing. We’re not going to let up. We’re going to keep up fighting.’ For the most part they did it. “Most importantly, we’re 3-0.”Say what you want about Kentucky’s non-conference schedule – and by all means, some of the gripes are legitimate – but the Cats took what they were given and performed about as well as they could have.When asked about the 3-0 start heading into conference play, Phillips offered an interesting anecdote from his playing days under head coach Jerry Claiborne. Phillips said they would count to 10 when stretching, but Claiborne would only begin counting once he thought the players were deep into the stretch.”He would wait five seconds and say, ‘Now we start,’ ” Phillips said.Whether it’s been a mirage of cupcakes to begin the season or the perfect tune-up to a big season, we’ll have to wait and find out. But as Phillips said it best, the true test begins Saturday in Gainesville.”Now we start,” Phillips said. “Conference play starts and it’s going to be one of those battles that you can’t relax. You cannot relax and be distracted, not be focused at any point in the game.  You cannot come out and sleepwalk through a quarter. You can’t do that because you’ll be down 14, 21 points.”