Rating:

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Joker Phillips thinks he knows why Kentucky has turned in two excellent second halves in a row. He's not as clear about what the problem is with his team in the first 30 minutes of the game.

Kentucky used a huge second half one week ago to erase an 18 point deficit to beat then eighth-ranked South Carolina 31-28. The week before Kentucky outscored then eighth-ranked Auburn 17-6 in the second half only to lose on a field goal on the game's final play.

"A lot of that has to do with conditioning" Phillips said of the Cats second half success. "The thing that I talked to them about was, hey lets condition our minds to play four quarters and play like that in the first half," he said.

Phillips said he hasn't seen anything in his team before the games that would suggest they were not ready to play.

"They are playing hard, there's no question about that, we just got to play a lot smarter and play with better technique in the first half," he said.

Phillips maintained after both the Auburn loss and the South Carolina win that there weren't any drastic changes to the game plan during halftime. A few players have admitted that the halftime break have helped them calm down.

""Things start to snowball and then we regroup at halftime and our guys relax and then we come out and make a couple of plays and then it starts to snowball the other way....When someone makes a play on you, it kind of gets you a little uptight. I think it helps if somebody on our team makes a play," Phillips said.

Ironically, as they work this week to remedy the slow starts, they're also preparing for Georgia - a team they scored one of their biggest wins against a year ago by making a three touchdown second half rally.