Five things you need to know from Kentucky football’s 34-10 loss at No. 6 Florida
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Game day: Florida 34, Kentucky 10
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Florida football game at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium in Gainesville, Fla.
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Five things you need to know from Kentucky football’s 34-10 loss to No. 6 Florida at Ben Hill Griffin Stadium:
1. Special teams disasters killed UK. On Florida’s first offensive drive of the game, the Kentucky defense forced a three-and-out — except the UK punt return team gave up a 15-yard run to upback Dameon Pierce on a fake.
Two plays later, Kyle Trask hit Kyle Pitts with a 54-yard touchdown pass.
After controlling the first half with its ball-control offense, UK had a 10-7 lead inside the final minute of the half.
But forced to punt from the shadows of its own goal posts, Kentucky’s Max Duffy kicked to the right side of the field — when the UK punt defenders thought the ball was going to the left.
Florida’s Kadarious Toney fielded the punt on the right and had an easy 50-yard jaunt into the end zone for a momentum-flipping touchdown.
Maybe it’s a coincidence, but in its first season since special-teams guru Dean Hood left the UK staff to become head coach at Murray State, Kentucky has had some major miscues in the kicking game.
Missed place-kicks cost Kentucky a loss vs. Mississippi.
UK failure to take advantage of field-goal opportunities helped the 63-3 loss at Alabama get out of hand.
And special team miscues negated a strong UK first-half performance at The Swamp on Saturday — and the punt-return TD seemed to break Kentucky’s spirit.
2. Another second-half disappearance for UK offense. One week after accumulating only one first down after halftime in the loss at Alabama, the Kentucky attack had no first downs in half two at Florida until there was less than 7:30 left in the game.
For the second straight week, the UK attack moved the ball effectively in half one but failed to finish drives. Kentucky had four first-half possessions, and three of them reached the Florida red zone — but yielded only 10 points.
Also for the second straight week, however, the second half was an all-out offensive slog for the Cats.
Given that the strength of the Kentucky team is its run-blocking offensive line, the Wildcats had an awful hard time converting third-and-short opportunities.
On third-and-3 or less, UK converted one of eight.
Meanwhile, forced to go to the air after falling behind by multiple scores, Kentucky threw three interceptions (two by Terry Wilson, one by Joey Gatewood) in half two.
UK finished with 221 yards of total offense, its sixth time in seven games that it has failed to reach 300 yards.
3. Kyle Pitts is pretty good. After missing two games with a concussion and a facial injury, the Florida star tight end made an emphatic return vs. UK.
The 6-foot-6, 246-pound junior from Philadelphia caught five passes for 99 yards and three TDs.
If he stays healthy, Pitts is going to make a whole lot of money in his life playing football on Sunday afternoons.
4. Another top-10 loss. Mark Stoops has six wins over Top 25 teams as UK coach, the third most in school history. Bear Bryant (9-10) and Fran Curci (9-19-1) each have nine wins over ranked foes. However, after falling to the No. 6 Gators, Stoops is now 0-13 vs. top-10 teams as UK coach.
5. Streak broken. With its victory, Florida snapped its one-game, home losing streak against Kentucky.
Fashion police
For its final road game of 2020, Kentucky wore blue helmets, white jerseys with blue letters and numbers and white pants.
UK is 2-4 this season in blue helmets.
This story was originally published November 28, 2020 at 3:17 PM.
