Facing the same end zone where his Kentucky football team fumbled away a chance at a marquee victory two years ago at Ole Miss, Mark Stoops chose optimism.
The situation seemed perfectly set up for another in a long line of Wildcat heartbreaks.
Just minutes earlier quarterback Brock Vandagriff had found Barion Brown for a 63-yard completion on fourth-and-7 to set up a go-ahead touchdown Kentucky scored when tight end Josh Kattus recovered a Gavin Wimsatt fumble and fell forward into the end zone, but an otherwise stellar defensive performance looked on the verge of being erased by a series of miscues in the biggest moment.
Facing fourth-and-11 with 1:54 remaining, Ole Miss quarterback Jaxson Dart found tight end Caden Prieskorn for a 42-yard gain when Kentucky safety Kristian Story appeared to lose the ball in the air. Even after that miscue, the Wildcats looked to have clinched the win by forcing a Dart fumble, but the play was negated by star defensive lineman Deone Walker lining up offside.
So when Ole Miss kicker Caden Davis, whose career long was from 56 yards, lined up for a 48-yard field goal attempt that could have sent the game at overtime, it would have been easy to think, “Here we go again.”
But Stoops chose optimism.
“I turned around to (defensive coordinator) Brad (White), and I think I took my headset off,” Stoops said. “I said, ‘Man, we’re due one.’ I mean, like we’re due. Like we’re due for a block or a miss. I mean, it’s our time.
“Sure enough, it happens.”
Davis’ field goal sailed wide left. Three kneel downs later, Kentucky football had secured a 20-17 victory over the No. 6 Rebels.
Only four times in program history had UK beaten a team ranked higher in the Associated Press Top 25. The Wildcats had never beaten an SEC rival ranked that high on their home field.
Amid growing complaints about Kentucky’s inability to win the biggest games on its schedule in recent years, Stoops maintained confidence his team would break through.
“It just felt really good be able to come here and finish what we didn’t get to finish two years ago,” said wide receiver Dane Key, who caught eight passes for 105 yards and one touchdown Saturday, two years after what appeared to be his game-winning touchdown was negated by an illegal shift penalty one play before quarterback Will Levis lost a fumble to end a chance to win in Oxford.
To get there, Stoops and company had to post what had to be one of the most improbable sequences in program history.
Like it did against then-No. 1 Georgia two weeks ago, Kentucky’s defense smothered an elite opponent to give itself a possession with a chance to take the lead late in the fourth quarter. But when wide receiver Fred Farrier could not come down with a possible third-down conversion with 4:02 remaining, it looked like the Ole Miss game would end just like the Georgia one — with a respectable performance in another close loss.
“We end up getting them to fourth down and they throw a go route,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said. “I have to credit Stoops. That’s not anything he’s probably ever done in his life. He got out of his character with three and a half minutes left. I commend him for doing that. I’m sure the ESPN percentage had us 98% winning at that point.”
The aftermath of Kentucky’s loss to Georgia centered around Stoops’ controversial decision to punt on a fourth-and-8 at the Georgia 48-yard line with 3:02 remaining. The decision backfired as Georgia recorded two first downs to essentially ice the win.
Two weeks later, facing fourth-and-7 at his own 20-yard line, 4:02 remaining and two timeouts still in hand, Stoops elected to be more aggressive.
“I just felt like I had to steal one, a possession or two,” Stoops said. “... I told (offensive coordinator) Bush (Hamdan) all week to have critical third downs, critical fourth downs. And he did a really good job. We had more plays in there in critical moments.”
Hamdan could have played it safe and dialed up a play where each receiver just ran to the first-down marker, but he left the option for a deep pass to Brown down the left sideline.
When Vandagriff lined up and realized they had gotten the man-to-man matchup on Brown that could make that route successful, he pounced. A maligned Kentucky offensive line protected long enough to give Vandagriff time to uncork the throw.
After Brown caught the pass near the Ole Miss 45-yard line, he cut back inside to avoid a defender and carried the ball to the Rebels’ 17-yard line.
There were still chances for things to go wrong, though.
An 11-yard Demie Sumo-Karngbaye run followed before Wimsatt was inserted for a first-and-goal run at the 6-yard line. As Wimsatt cut toward the end zone, the ball popped out of his hands.
But instead of a Levis-like 2022 disaster, Kattus plucked the ball out of the air and dove into the end zone for the go-ahead touchdown.
“Sometimes you got about 7 seconds to make those decisions up there,” Hamdan said. “I’m fortunate it worked out how it did, because we know if it didn’t, we would be asking why we didn’t punt it back.”
Now less than a month after Kentucky’s season looked left for dead after a home loss to South Carolina, there will be reason to watch for the release of the Associated Press poll Sunday to see if UK is included.
Had Kentucky beaten South Carolina, the Wildcats would be hyped as a playoff contender. The remaining schedule — with trips to No. 1 Texas and No. 5 Tennessee — looks too daunting to dream of that scenario yet, but fears of the eight-season bowl streak being snapped can be put to the side.
“With the guys we got on our team, you’re never really out of the fight,” Vandagriff said. “It all comes down from the coach to the players. What’s conveyed to us is what we’re going to convey to each other. What we knew as we came in here, if we executed our game plan like we should, we liked where we’d be sitting in the fourth quarter, especially with our defense.”
After defeating Ole Miss and just missing the upset against Georgia, this Kentucky team has to be taken seriously.
The Wildcats secured the upset Saturday despite star cornerback Maxwell Hairston watching the game from the hospital. It held an Ole Miss offense that led the country in almost every statistical category entering the day to just 17 points and 353 yards.
But perhaps most impressively, when given ample opportunity to fall into the “same old Kentucky” narrative, the Wildcats chose optimism.
“We say that every time, and then they make it,” White said with a smile. “So I guess the odds are one of those times they’re going to miss.
“And, man, what a great feeling.”
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