Mistakes were too much for Kentucky to overcome against Ole Miss

Kentucky had possession of the football inside the Ole Miss 35 on all three offensive possessions in the fourth quarter. The Wildcats came away with zero points.

When looking back at the 22-19 loss to Ole Miss, many will remember the blunders that kept the Wildcats out of the winner’s circle. The team showed a lot of fight, but the self-inflicted wounds were too much to overcome in a road game against a top-15 opponent.

“Extremely proud of our team with a lot of bad things going on with ourselves making a lot of mistakes, with them doing some good things, the adversity we faced. Coming in at halftime, nobody flinching. Everybody had a calmness about them,” Mark Stoops told the media after the loss. “It felt like we were going to go back out there in the second half and compete and come back and win the football game. And we certainly had our opportunities.”

“With all that being said, to come down with two opportunities late in the game in the red zone there and came away with zero. That’s the difference in the game.”

Kentucky was unable to finish drives in the fourth quarter and that ultimately ended up being the difference in the game. In a matchup that had some razor-thin margins, UK’s mistakes were the ultimate decider in crunch time.

“I thought it was a very close game,” Stoops said. “I felt like it was evenly matched going into it. That’s a good football team. We come into this environment, and at times we handled it very well, and at times we shot ourselves in the foot and made some mistakes. We have a very good team. I thought the way they handled all that, fought back, believed, came back, and competed to win the game and had every opportunity to win it. Just didn’t happen.

Kentucky showed scratch and clawed, but too much sloppy football cost Kentucky the win.

“I thought they played extremely hard, extremely tough, extremely resilient,” Stoops said about his team. “We didn’t play very clean. Not very precise in certain areas.”

Before South Carolina and Mississippi State roll into Lexington before the bye week over the next two Saturdays, Kentucky must get their offensive execution miscues fixed. The Cats will soon find themselves in another game with a razor-thin margin where late-game execution will be needed to win.