After three tough games against a pair of top-10 teams and a resurrgent Georgia squad, is there any chance of a letdown for the Kentucky football team as it goes back out on the road?”I’m not worried about that because this team can win out,” senior defensive tackle Ricky Lumpkin said. “But the thing is, we have to know we can’t make the same mistakes we made.”= = =If Kentucky scores at least 30 points Saturday night, it will mark the first time in school history that the Wildcats have hit that mark in five straight Southeastern Conference games.= = =Kentucky is looking for its third straight win in Starkville, Miss., this weekend, and once again the stakes are high.The Cats are hoping a win propels them into a four-game winning streak that would carry them to a bigger bowl game.  In 2008, Randall Cobb made his first start at quarterback and directed UK to a 14-13 win that clinched bowl eligibility. The Cats would not win again until the Liberty Bowl victory over East Carolina, so without the victory at MSU, the bowl streak would have ended.In 2006, UK went to MSU off a 49-0 drubbing at LSU that many felt was the last stand of the Rich Brooks regime. Instead, the Cats outgunned State 34-31, and a week later upset Georgia, starting the turnaround in Kentucky’s football fortunes that enabled Brooks to leave on his own terms.State returned the favor with wins at UK in 2007 and 2009, both of which may have cost the Wildcats an opportunity to play in that bigger bowl they are seeking now.=  = =Like Stevie Johnson, Aaron Boone and Scott Mitchell before him,  junior-college transfer Chris Matthews has blossomed in his second year at the University of Kentucky.He notched his seventh touchdown catch of the season in the loss to Georgia and he credits first-year wide receivers coach Tee Martin with helping him elevate his game.”Tee Martin, personally, I think he is the best in the league right now,” Matthews said. “He is a great coach and if anybody really was coached by him, they would up their game tremendously. I know I did. He has taught me a lot from when I first got here until now. Coach Joker (Phillips) did a good job but was still managing the offense. Now that we have a receivers coach that can go with us one on one and show the techniques that we have now, it is just amazing.”Matthews said Martin is a big detail guy.”From the film room, he wants us to pick out little things,” Matthews said. “It is never a moment wasted in there. He wants us to take in things and make it better. It could be something so small as lining up and seeing what is the other guy going to do. We try to bet each other on how many pushups or what coverage it will be, and so doing things like that is opening up our eyes to what is going on.”Matthews isn’t the only one playing his best football as a senior. Quarterback Mike Hartline is on top of his game, too.”Mike is doing a phenomenal job right now,” Matthews said. “He is throwing balls that he would never throw last year. He feels more comfortable with us going down the field and throwing into tight coverage.”= = =Sophomore outside linebacker Ridge Wilson will make the first start of his career in Saturday’s game at Mississippi State. Defensive coordinator Steve Brown said Wilson worked his way into that role by what he’s done on the practice field.”We really look at these players’ body language,” Brown said. “Are they coachable?  Everybody thinks they should be playing but it’s earned. And that’s what he’s done.”Wilson said he didn’t fully appreciate Brown harping on the need to read his keys. Wilson said he was playing like he did in high school when he would use his instincts to make a play, but he has come to understand the importance of how studying his position’s responsibilities can help from getting burned.= = =We get our first look at John Calipari’s second Kentucky basketball team (since the games in Canada), when the Cats play an exhibition game against Pikeville on Monday night.One thing this team has in common with the 35-3 group of last season is how well a buch of newcomers have meshed their personalities. Freshman point guard Brandon Knight is not surprised.”Not at all,” Knight said. “We all talked before we got here. It’s not surprising that we clicked.  It’s what we expected.”= = =”Frustration” would probably not begin to describe the feelings of UK recruit Enes Kanter right now as he awaits word on his eligibility from the NCAA.Sporting News college basketball writer Mike DeCourcy said this is a test case for the NCAA, because the rules have changed now. Last year, a player at West Virginia was in a similar situation and the rule called for him to miss one game for every game he played with a professional team in Europe. Now, the one-for-one rule is gone.”The rule has changed,” DeCourcy said. “What you have to remember is that you have to start with this foundation — the European clubs do not want thier players playing in college basketball because A, they are not playing for them, and B, they cannot sell them to the NBA. It was really easy under the old rule, the one-for-one rule. That rule is gone and it was a ridiculous rule (anyway).””They got rid of that rule, and now what are the European clubs going to do to keep thier players from coming over here?” DeCourcy said. “That becomes the question: What are they going to do? And that is what we are facing now. How much is Turkey going to do to keep Enes Kanter from playing American basketball?”Two recent New York Times’ articles featuring comments from the general manager of the team for which Kanter played in Turkey would seem to suggest that they are willing to push very hard against Kanter playing here.