Despite the busts, the blunders and special teams sins Mark Stoops’ team committed Saturday at Missouri, it’s important to keep the main thing the main thing.
Kentucky won the football game.
Kentucky won a road SEC football game.
Kentucky is now 6-3 overall, 3-3 in the SEC.
Kentucky is now bowl eligible for a seventh consecutive season.
“We’re beyond that, but it doesn’t mean we take it for granted,” Stoops said on Saturday after his Cats pulled out a 21-17 victory over Mizzou on an afternoon that began cold and windy and ended in bright sunshine.
To be sure, there was plenty to gripe about in UK’s performance. There was a 12-men-on-the-field penalty that allowed Missouri to re-kick and make a field goal after a miss. (“That’s one on me,” said Stoops, whose late player substitution caused a miscommunication mistake.) There were two Matt Ruffolo missed field goals — a 43-yarder with the wind that he appeared to rush, and a 47-yarder into the wind that came up short. There was the offense’s inability to turn short fields into first half points. And there was a fourth-quarter punt snap that sailed over the head of punter Colin Goodfellow.
“Don’t even ask me questions about special teams; we’ve got to get that fixed,” said Stoops, who quickly switched gears and relented to questions. “We’ve got to get it fixed.”
There was a lot of good, however, starting with Goodfellow, who made the play of the game. With just under three minutes remaining and Kentucky clinging to a four-point lead, the punter not only ran down the errant snap, collecting the bouncing ball just before the goal line with Missouri players in hot pursuit, he also got off a punt while being crushed by one of those Tigers.
The punt made it to the UK 40. More importantly, Missouri was called for roughing the punter — “He was still in the tackle box,” Stoops said of the officials’ explanation — allowing the visitors to keep the football and snap the ball four more times, causing Mizzou to burn its final two timeouts before taking possession at its 13-yard line with just 38 seconds left.
Meanwhile, as the Missouri fans booed the roughing call, Goodfellow needed a cart to be taken off the field. “He was in severe pain,” Stoops said afterward. “It was just a remarkable play.”
There were others. Replacing the injured DeAndre Square, UK’s Trevin Wallace was all over the field, making nine tackles, three for loss with one sack. On offense, facing a Missouri defense ranked 18th nationally in yards allowed per game, the Cats responded after Missouri took a 17-14 lead with 8:07 remaining.
UK’s winning drive covered 58 yards in six plays. Freshman wide receiver Dane Key made the two most important. His 19-yard reception from quarterback Will Levis started the drive. His 22-yard touchdown with 5:18 left ended it when on third-and-11 Key grabbed a Levis pass, broke a tackle and dove into the end zone.
“Dane’s a playmaker,” said Levis.
It is true these Cats are not going to accomplish their original goal. They’re not going to win the SEC East. They’re not going to Atlanta. When Georgia comes to Kroger Field on Nov. 19, the best they can do is play SEC spoiler.
Still, all things considered, playing in the nation’s toughest conference, given the program’s history, or lack thereof, three SEC victories is nothing to downplay. A Kentucky win over Vanderbilt on Saturday would clinch at least a .500 conference record for this team, its fifth in its last seven years.
Remember, this is a Kentucky football program that did not post a winning SEC record from 1978 through 2015. Only six times during that span did the Cats break even in the conference — 1979, 1984, 1993, 1998, 1999 and 2006.
“It does a lot,” Stoops said when asked what the win does for a team coming off that 44-6 shellacking at Tennessee the week before. “Our players, it’s hard, it is. When you play this schedule with these teams, the grind that our players have on him, they want the results. We all do.”
