Five things you need to know from Kentucky football’s 21-17 win over Missouri
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Game day: Kentucky 21, Missouri 17
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Missouri football game at Memorial Stadium in Columbia, Mo.
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Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 21-17 win over Missouri in an SEC East football game at Faurot Field at Memorial Stadium:
1. Colin Goodfellow: Game hero. In a season in which bad long-snaps have continually foiled the Kentucky special teams, UK actually won the game with a horrible punt snap.
The Wildcats were punting from their own 42 in the final moments, when a high snap sailed over the head of Cats’ punter Colin Goodfellow.
Near the UK 5-yard line, Goodfellow chased down the ball, spun and — amazingly — got a kick off.
Missouri’s Will Norris was in all-out pursuit of the Kentucky punter. Just as Goodfellow turned to punt, Norris pummeled him.
Because Goodfellow was in the motion of kicking and the ball had never left the tackle box, Norris was called for roughing the punter.
That gave Kentucky a first down at the Mizzou 44 with 2:25 left in the game.
UK was able to run all but the final 38 seconds off the clock and won the game.
An injured Goodfellow had to be carted off the field after his late kick. But, amazingly, the punter’s deft handling of a horrid snap allowed Kentucky to win the game.
“Goodfellow sacrificed his body to win that game,” Wildcats’ linebacker Trevin Wallace told the UK Radio Network after the contest.
2. A “culture” win. This was the kind of game Kentucky football teams lost for years. In many ways, it felt like the Cats won in spite of themselves.
Kentucky had wildly favorable field position throughout the first half, yet converted that into only seven points.
UK missed two first-half field-goal tries.
After Missouri missed a 49-yard field goal in the first half, the Tigers’ Harrison Mevis got a second chance because Kentucky had 12 men on the field. Mevis then cashed in a 44-yard field goal.
Kentucky committed a whopping 12 penalties.
The struggling UK offensive line surrendered a whopping 11 tackles for loss and watched quarterback Will Levis sacked six times.
Leading 14-3 entering the fourth quarter, Kentucky saw Missouri score touchdowns on back-to-back drives to take a 17-14 lead.
With all that self-inflicted damage, “old Kentucky” loses an SEC road game. It wasn’t pretty but the “current Kentucky” found a way to pull it out.
3. UK creating new defensive stars. With super-senior linebackers DeAndre Square and Jacquez Jones both out with injuries and the UK secondary also thinned out due to injuries, the Wildcats saw some young players step into starring roles.
Sophomore weakside linebacker Trevin Wallace had a stellar first half — six tackles, three tackles for loss and a sack — and finished with nine total tackles.
For the second-straight week, sophomore nickelback Andru Phillips played huge. The second-generation Wildcat had six tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss and a pass breakup.
4. Cats make some history. For the first time in his college career, Dane Key caught two touchdown passes in a game. The true freshman from Frederick Douglass had a 9-yard TD catch on Kentucky’s opening drive of the game.
Then, after Mizzou had taken the lead at 17-14 with only 8:07 left in the game, Key had the game-winning TD catch from 22 yards out to complete a stone-cold, clutch UK drive.
Key now has five TD catches in his freshman season. That is a Kentucky freshmen record.
The three touchdown passes that Will Levis threw give him 40 for his UK career. That moved him past Mike Hartline (38) into fifth-place in Kentucky history.
Kentucky star running back Christopher Rodriguez ran for 112 yards. He now has 3,311 in his UK career. He needs 23 more to pass Moe Williams (3,333 career yards) for No. 3 on the all-time Kentucky list.
Besides Williams, still ahead of “C-Rod” on Kentucky’s career rushing list are Benny Snell (3,873) and Sonny Collins (3,835).
5. Stoops vs. the East. With the victory, Kentucky Coach Mark Stoops is now 7-3 vs. Missouri.
Against UK’s SEC East rivals, this is how Stoops has fared: Florida (3-7); Georgia (0-9); Missouri (7-3); South Carolina (7-3); Tennessee (2-8) and Vanderbilt (7-2).
The Wildcats still have games left in 2022 with SEC East foes Vandy (Nov. 12) and Georgia (Nov. 19), both in Lexington.
Oh, with its sixth victory, Kentucky (6-3, 3-3 SEC) is now bowl-eligible for the seventh straight season.
Fashion police
For its final road game of the 2022 regular season, Kentucky wore blue helmets, white jerseys with blue letters and numbers and blue pants.
With Saturday’s victory, the Wildcats are now 4-8 in the blue, white, blue uniform combination since the start of the 2015 season — with three of the victories (2016, 2018, 2022) vs. Missouri in Columbia.
This story was originally published November 5, 2022 at 3:54 PM.
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