Mark Stoops missed a big opportunity to win a game he really needed
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky squandered a 10-point lead and fell 30-23 to No. 20 Ole Miss.
- Disorganized offense cost Kentucky key first-half points.
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Gameday: No. 20 Ole Miss 30, Kentucky 23
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Ole Miss football game at Kroger Field in Lexington.
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A game Mark Stoops really needed was right there to be taken Saturday.
Lane Kiffin and No. 20 Mississippi sauntered into Lexington and saw their brand-new quarterback, Austin Simmons, throw back-to-back interceptions to Kentucky safety Ty Bryant in the first quarter that spotted the Wildcats a 10-0 lead.
From that favorable start, UK weathered a series of explosive plays from Kiffin’s high-octane offense and was tied with the Rebels 20-20 late in the third quarter.
For Stoops, a victory that would have reminded a restless fan base why there is still value in the head coach who has won more football games than anyone who has coached Kentucky was within grasp.
Instead, as has happened all too regularly at Kroger Field in SEC games over the past three-plus seasons, it was Mississippi that made the plays when it mattered.
As a result, Ole Miss avenged last season’s upset loss to UK in Oxford with a 30-23 win before a crowd of 58,346.
“We got off to a great start, gave ourselves an opportunity, and did many good things,” Stoops said afterward. “But you know, certainly we all will look at a lot of the negatives and a lot of things that we need to get fixed and get cleaned up. And, quite frankly, some of them are inexcusable.”
For UK backers, that is same song, different verse.
The Wildcats (1-1, 0-1 SEC) have now lost eight SEC home games in a row and are 2-14 in their last 16 conference contests at Kroger Field dating back to the final league home game of 2021. Overall, Stoops and the troops have now dropped 15 of their last 18 games against power conference opposition.
This time, UK was done in by a disorganized first-half offensive performance that saw the Wildcats have to burn all three of their time outs to prevent the play clock from running out. Inevitably, that came back to bite the Wildcats, who reached the Ole Miss 40-yard line with 13 seconds left in the first half but, without a timeout, failed to score.
“Really inexcusable, to be totally honest with you,” Stoops said of the first-half chaos. “There’s things where we are trying to get the best personnel we can with certain plays. You know, we’ve got to be better. We’ve just got to function better. There were issues that we thought we had in our communication on the sideline and with the quarterback here and there, with his communication device, but there’s no excuse for it.”
Kentucky’s offensive production against Ole Miss, 354 total yards, was the second-best against a power conference foe of second-year UK offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan’s nine games calling the Wildcats attack.
But staked those 10 early points by Bryant’s two picks, UK ultimately turned eight total trips inside Mississippi territory into only 13 more points.
Starting quarterback Zach Calzada, the transfer from Incarnate Word, had a second straight choppy performance. Calzada completed only 15 of 30 passes for 149 yards. He threw no touchdowns or interceptions before leaving the game in the fourth quarter with an injured shoulder.
Cutter Boley, the former Lexington Christian Academy star, entered in relief of Calzada and had a chance for a hero turn.
Taking over at the Ole Miss 40 with UK down 27-20, Boley drove Kentucky to a third-and-9 at the Ole Miss 29. In what seemed an odd play call, Kentucky had Boley fake a pitch out, then run into the middle of the line for 2 yards. With Stoops eschewing the field goal attempt, Boley was sacked on fourth-and-7.
Afterward, Hamdan said the third-down run with Boley was because UK was treating the situation as a two-down scenario to get the first down.
“We were in a four-down situation there,” Hamdan said. “You know, a lot of times when you know you’re going for it on fourth down, you treat third down as second down. Last year, we ran something similar. We’re able to get that to a closer fourth-down situation. And that was the thought process there.”
Defensively, there were many times Saturday when Kentucky played Ole Miss as well as the Wildcats did a season ago in holding the then-No. 6 Rebels to 17 points in the 20-17 upset.
But, this time, Kentucky gave up seven explosive plays of 20 yards or more that did in the Wildcats. Ole Miss gained 238 yards on those seven plays — and 217 yards on the other 65 plays it ran from scrimmage.
“Goes back to execution,” UK linebacker Daveren Rayner said. “You got to tackle. You got to finish.”
During the prime time of the Stoops era, Kentucky knew how to finish.
From 2016 through 2021, UK was 20-9 in games decided by eight points or fewer. Counting Saturday, Kentucky is now 5-8 in such games since 2022.
What makes this one sting is that a win was right there for the taking — and Stoops really needed his team to take it.
