UT's perfect kicker takes aim at Gators

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Tennessee kicker Daniel Lincoln, middle, gets a handshake from teammates after kicking one of his three field goals against Southern Miss on Saturday night at Neyland Stadium. Lincoln, will play near his home of Ocala, Fla., on Saturday.

Photo by Joe Howell
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Tennessee kicker Daniel Lincoln, middle, gets a handshake from teammates after kicking one of his three field goals against Southern Miss on Saturday night at Neyland Stadium. Lincoln, will play near his home of Ocala, Fla., on Saturday.

Daniel Lincoln ought to have some pretty good dreams Friday night.

First, he'll fall asleep in his hometown of Ocala, Fla., where the Tennessee football team will stay on the eve of its SEC opener against No. 5 Florida (TV: WVLT, 3:30 p.m.).

And then Lincoln has the comfort of knowing he's off to the best start for a Tennessee kicker in more than 20 years.

How's that for a warm glass of milk and a comfy pillow?

The redshirt freshman's 4-for-4 start is the best for a UT kicker since Carlos Reveiz started his career 6-of-6 in 1985. It's meant 12 points for the 22nd-ranked Vols this season, but it's meant a lot more than that for Lincoln's confidence.

"I feel really comfortable going into it (Saturday's game), really confident," said Lincoln after giving credit for his hot start to UT coach Phillip Fulmer, deep snapper Morgan Cox and holder Casey Woods.

Woods saw that confidence first take hold during the Vols' season opener.

At the Friday walk-through at Cal's Memorial Stadium, Woods wasn't so sure.

Lincoln found out for sure he'd be handling the place-kicking duties with Britton Colquitt's strained quadriceps muscle still not at 100 percent.

That's when Woods saw the nerves hit Lincoln.

"You could see it in his eyes, 'It's really here. Here we go,' " Woods said. "It just kind of hit him at the walk-through. I was thinking, 'Oh, here we go.' But he got out there on game day and started kicking it and making it during pregame. By the time we went out there for the kick, he looked as natural as he did at practice."

The result was a 41-yard field goal in front of a loud crowd of 72,516 that closed the Vols' deficit to a touchdown in the first minute of the fourth quarter.

"Crowd noise was bad, fake lights, hostile environment, first kick ever, a 41-yard kick," Woods says now. "It was incredible."

Three more field goals followed last week in Neyland Stadium against Southern Miss, including a career-long 47-yarder with 6:33 to go.

Now it's on to Florida, where a much more hostile crowd awaits.

Well, mostly hostile.

Lincoln's grandfather will make the trip from his home in Massachusetts to see his grandson kick for the first time in person. A gaggle of Lincoln's family and friends from Ocala, about 35 minutes south of Gainesville, will be there as well as his high school coach.

They'll all be at The Swamp, where Lincoln attended countless games growing up.

And Saturday won't even be the first time Lincoln has kicked in Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. He twice attended camp at Florida, although he never received so much as a letter from the Gators' coaching staff during the recruiting process.

"Never heard from them," he said. "They signed a guy the year before I was coming out. Didn't get any phone calls. No letters, no mail. Nothing."

Nothing is what Woods and Colquitt hope Lincoln feels on the field Saturday if called upon to kick.

"He'll be very emotional, but I'll try to tell him not to be, because emotional's not good for a kicker," Colquitt said. "You've got to be really calm. I'll try to work with him on that. It's one of those things that Florida's just emotional, no matter who you are."

Right now, Lincoln is making every kick. He's preparing for the challenges Saturday's homecoming will present to make sure he stays that way.

"You start preparing for that right now," Lincoln said. "When you get out there, you're a competitor, you look forward to this kind of competition, this kind of game, this kind of experience. I'm really looking forward to it."

And hoping to stay perfect.

Oddly enough, Reveiz's perfect streak ended on Florida Field when he missed a 51-yard attempt.

Lincoln's predecessor, James Wilhoit, gave UT its last win over the Gators with a 50-yard field goal in 2004, the first of two games in the last three years to be decided by fewer than three points.

A situation like that could be where Lincoln's perfect streak should help the most, Colquitt says.

"It's great that he hasn't had the feeling of a missed field goal in a game," Colquitt said. "They don't feel good, and the last thing you want to do is get lined up and all of sudden you have that bad, bitter feeling of a miss. That's when you miss.

"He's going to go down there and have those good feelings of making field goals, and it's going to be easy to make them. A lot easier than it would be had he not."

Drew Edwards covers University of Tennessee football. He may be reached at 865-342-6274.

© 2007, Knoxville News Sentinel Co.
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