Thankfully, Kentucky's lackluster second half didn't come back to bite them

Kentucky beat Vanderbilt tonight to snap a three-game losing streak and secure a winning SEC record for only the second time since 1977. The Cats carried over a strong offensive performance from the Tennessee game in the first half with 31 points and 278 yards. Unfortunately, that momentum dissipated in the second half. Kentucky’s only points after halftime came off a Matt Ruffalo field goal. Vanderbilt outgained Kentucky 161-135, scoring 14 points behind backup quarterback Mike Wright.

This isn’t the first time Kentucky has faded in the second half this season. After praising his team for playing the best football of the season in the first half, Mark Stoops expressed his frustrations for their performance in the second.

“The second half, I just felt like you know, again, I just wish we would at times get some better stops defensively. I thought that handcuffed the offense a little bit. Part of it was their own doing. Not the first possession or maybe the second possession we had a three and out. We did what we had to do to win the game. I felt like we could have been in more attack mode in the second half had we’ve been playing better defensively. I felt like we just kind of got a little out of kilter there again defensively, and now that was a little bit frustrating.”

With Mike Wright in, Vanderbilt’s offense found new energy. The ‘Dores were able to move the ball down the field, converting 3-5 third downs.

“You have to give credit to No. 5,” Josh Paschal said of Wright. “They switched up their quarterbacks. He came in, he was an athletic guy and he was ready to play too. It was one of those things, it was a playmaker making plays.”

“I think they did a nice job of just converting some third downs, moving the football,” Stoops said. “They weren’t getting big chunks. They got the reverse pass. We got bad eyes, dirty eyes again, and got beat on that. Outside of that, there weren’t a lot of chunk plays, but they did a nice job of just converting. You felt like you were going to win the game when they were operating that way but, again, I’d like to get some stops and turn the offense loose to continue to build the confidence of our whole team.”

After such an impressive first half, Will Levis said Kentucky’s objective was to keep the foot on the gas. For whatever reason, that didn’t happen.

“We came out in the second half with the game plan to put the nail in the coffin and choke them out and finish the game out and we didn’t do that,” Levis said. “It’s games like that where everything’s going your way, you want to find challenges to still improve on and that was an area we haven’t been able to necessarily capitalize on all season. We had an opportunity to do that in this game and it didn’t come together for us, so it was a little frustrating. Obviously, at the end of the day, glad we got the win and that’s all that really matters but it’s one thing that we can go back and look at and see how we can improve in that area.”