Alabama football has a chance to clinch the SEC West on Saturday at Kentucky. The Crimson Tide are 8-1 on the season, 6-0 in league play, and will seal a trip to Atlanta with a victory or an Ole Miss loss.

The game is scheduled to kick off at 11 a.m. CT from Kroger Field in Lexington. It will be aired on ESPN.

Before the game, here are three questions for Alabama to answer on Saturday.

How will the defense deal with injuries?

It’s unlikely that the Crimson Tide will have linebacker Deontae Lawson or safety Jaylen Key for Saturday’s matchup with the Wildcats. Both were injured in last week’s victory over LSU, and Nick Saban sounded doubtful either would play Saturday.

Lawson left the game in the second half after suffering an ankle injury. He later reappeared on the sideline wearing a boot.

The Tide will likely go with Trezmen Marshall, who recently recovered from a rib injury himself, and Jihaad Campbell at inside linebacker.

Key injured a quad against the Tigers in the first half while breaking up a pass. His absence would likely mean Kristian Story would see more playing time.

Alabama has seen injuries on defense this season and been just fine. However, the Wildcats play a physical brand of football and lacking key depth late could prove to be an issue for the Tide as players get tired.

Can the offensive line keep it up?

For weeks, Alabama’s offensive line was a major concern. Then, against LSU, the Crimson Tide’s front played its best game of the season.

A large part was left tackle Kadyn Proctor, who looked better against the Tigers than he had all season.

“He’s getting better,” Nick Saban said of Proctor. “He’s playing better. He has more confidence. I think he knows what to do, and because of that confidence, he — he was apprehensive sometimes about doing what we was supposed to do even when he knew what he was supposed to do. All of that comes with confidence.

Kentucky plays a physical brand of football. The Wildcats won’t make some of the mistakes LSU did when defending Crimson Tide quarterback Jalen Milroe.

Saturday will be a test to see if the offensive line improvement is for real.

Will Jalen Milroe’s star turn continue?

When Alabama lost to Texas in Week 2, much of the national college football conversation turned away from UA QB Jalen Milroe, other than to note he was benched against South Florida before returning against Ole Miss. During the LSU game, pundits seemingly tuned back in.

After his performance, which included four rushing touchdowns, the word “Heisman” started to appear in print.

“Experience is helping a lot,” Milroe said this week about his improvement. ” With that, acknowledging that I’m not a finished product and embracing the challenge of wanting to improve, I think that’s very key. With stepping up in the pocket: I trust in the guys up front, they are doing a really good job and working really hard. So my job is to make their job much easier which is stepping up in the pocket so I have to embrace that and challenge myself to do that for the guys that are blocking up front and I honestly have to improve on that. But moving forward we have a great plan with our offense.”

The opportunity is there for Alabama to seize the SEC West and keep its national title hopes alive against Kentucky. For the Tide to capitalize, it will take another strong effort from its quarterback.