Kentucky thought it had won the game with a fumble, but it turned out not to be

It felt like the longest replay in history for Kentucky.

Driving down the field in the game’s final seconds, Ole Miss quarterback Jordan Ta’amu was upended by a Kentucky defender and it looked like the ball popped loose, sealing a UK win.

But the replay showed Ta’amu’s elbow was down and the drive continued, ending in the junior-college transfer finding wide receiver D.K. Metcalf in the left corner of the end zone to seal the 37-34 heartbreak for Kentucky at Kroger Field.

The former backup quarterback, in just his second start on Saturday, said he knew his elbow was on the ground.

“Or some part of my body was on the ground, so I wasn’t worried about that,” he said. “I was just worried about the next play and what we were going to do as an offense.”

Kentucky’s players and coaches were hoping that it would remain a fumble on replay, but that wasn’t the case.

“We knew it was going to be a 50/50 call,” linebacker Courtney Love said of the almost fumble. “Coach even told us to come back down after that whole thing happened.

“I told the defense, ‘Regardless, we have to go back out there and we have to make a play.’ And, unfortunately, we didn’t. We weren’t able to make that play in the last seconds. It’s a tough one.”

After the loss, Mark Stoops said he thought Kentucky “had it won with the fumble.

“And we’ve got to come back and convert and play, and they made a super-competitive catch in the end zone and we didn’t,” he said. “It’s a game of inches. Give them credit; they played very hard.”

Big night for two playmakers

Kentucky tight end C.J. Conrad is starting to wonder if he’s cursed. He hadn’t scored a touchdown since the loss to Florida on Sept. 23 and then his next score came in a loss against Ole Miss on Saturday.

“It was nice to get in the end zone again,” said Conrad, who had five catches for 75 yards, including that 46-yard touchdown grab.

“Obviously I’d like to do that when we win. Maybe it’s just bad luck because the last two times I’ve scored, we’ve lost. Maybe I shouldn’t get in the end zone.”

Kentucky was able to take advantage of some situations in this game and get its playmaking tight end the ball after he’d struggled to get open in the past few games.

“That was an RPO that we hit him on — the one that he scored the long touchdown on — and that was some of what they were doing to us, and they left him open on that particular play,” Stoops said. “But again, we’ve had those things called all year.”

It also was a big night for Cats running back Benny Snell, who followed up a 180-yard, three-touchdown performance a week ago against Tennessee with three more touchdowns.

“He’s a tough, hard-nosed young man and I thought our offensive line on that last drive, I thought they did a heck of a job,” offensive coordinator Eddie Gran said of Snell, who had 176 yards on 28 carries. The sophomore is now just 12 yards away from eclipsing 2,000 career yards rushing.

If there were positives to take, Snell found them in UK being able to get its ground game going for the second straight game, outrushing Ole Miss 219-91.

“This is who we are,” Snell said. “This is Kentucky football we’re playing, but we came up short.”

‘We tried a bit of everything’

Kentucky’s secondary still has a lot of work to do, said its head coach, who also has been a defensive backs coach his entire career.

When asked where UK goes from here, after giving up 382 yards and four touchdowns through the air to Ole Miss on Saturday, Stoops said: “Back to work.

Then added: “You know, there’s only so many things you can do. I mean, we tried rolling it. We tried playing zone. We tried playing man. We tried pressing. We tried playing off. We tried a bit of everything.”

That did not go unnoticed by Rebels receiver D.K. Metcalf, who had two touchdowns, including the game winner.

“They threw a lot of different coverages at us and, you know, the game plan for cover two, cover four, man — which we’ve worked on every day at practice, and just watched film,” Metcalf said.

Kentucky’s corners have to keep improving, Stoops said.

“It’s difficult,” Stoops said. “I thought the last play there Lonnie (Johnson) played it good. He was getting physical, he was in good shape. You’ve got to strip it out. He went up and got it in by inches, and we’ve just got to finish it all the way to the ground.”

This story was originally published November 4, 2017 at 9:55 PM with the headline "Kentucky thought it had won the game with a fumble, but it turned out not to be."