Going ‘toe-to-toe’ with No. 1 Georgia gives Kentucky football renewed hope for 2024
It’s why they play the game.
“I think I learned something about my team,” Mark Stoops said on Saturday night.
He learned it in a loss. That’s not ideal. A win is always better than a loss. But after the deep disappointment that was his team’s putrid performance the week before against South Carolina, the Kentucky coach can be forgiven from take encouragement from a 13-12 loss to the No. 1-ranked Georgia Bulldogs. He wasn’t alone.
After all, Georgia entered Kroger Field a 24-point favorite. Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs had won 27 straight regular-season SEC games. They had won 41 straight regular-season games overall, including 15 straight road games. They had beaten Kentucky 14 straight seasons. They are the big Dawgs of not just the conference, but the country, national champions in 2021 and 2022, then 12-1 last season.
Meanwhile, Kentucky was a wounded cat. A 31-6 home loss to South Carolina will do that a team, not to mention a Big Blue Nation fan base that was as down on Stoops and his program as perhaps at any point in his 12-year tenure as UK coach.
“It was a hard week,” Stoops admitted.
His team responded by playing hard. Very hard. After struggling to block South Carolina last week, Kentucky’s offensive line found a way to block the big, bad Bulldogs. UK’s backs ran hard. Its receivers made good catches. Its quarterback, Brock Vandagriff, the Georgia transfer, showed his toughness and grit, leading the home team to 23 first downs.
Unfortunately, Kentucky ended up with zero touchdowns. And for the second straight week. Instead, this night it settled for four Alex Raynor field goals, including two bombs from beyond 50 yards. Raynor’s 55-yard field goal in the first quarter was a school record. His 51-yarder in the final quarter cut Georgia’s lead to one point.
Thank Brad White’s stellar defense. Proof: Georgia’s 13 points was its fewest since a 10-3 win over Clemson that opened the 2021 season. Kentucky outgained the Dogs 284-262. It put pressure on the quarterback, ran to the football and tackled.
Give Georgia quarterback and Heisman Trophy candidate Carson Beck credit. The senior signal-caller made the plays when he had to make the plays. Beck began the second half 8-of-10 passing for 87 yards in leading the visitors to 10 points, including the game’s only touchdown.
And when Kentucky was desperately trying to get a stop to get the ball back in the final minutes, it was Beck that hit wide receiver Dominic Lovett for a 33-yard back-breaking gain with just over two minutes remaining.
“That play will haunt me,” Stoops said. “Probably for a long time.”
I didn’t have a problem with Stoops decision to punt the ball away with 2:58 left despite trailing. UK still had three timeouts plus the 2-minute timeout remaining. Nor did I have a problem with Stoops taking the three points with nine seconds left at the end of the first half and no time outs. True, he could have instead of tried a pass into the end zone before the kick. He would have done so with a quarterback making his third college start, his second in the SEC. Too much could have gone wrong. An interception. A botched snap. A sack. This is the Georgia defense we’re talking about.
Stoops said his program is about 10 years past moral victories, “but I do care about how we play.” And there were plenty of reasons to question the way the Cats played and coached after being spanked by South Carolina. Especially this early in the season. Saturday, UK went, in Stoops’ words, “toe-to-toe” with the Dawgs.
So now there’s hope. Renewed hope. The schedule is still brutal. There are no doubt landmines we haven’t seen yet. And this team has plenty of areas where improvement is needed. But Kentucky showed Saturday it has the resiliency and the pride — “There’s a lot of pride in this building,” defensive coordinator Brad White said — to make something of this year just yet.
And as they say, that’s why they play the game.
