'I don't have regret on that': Mark Stoops would not change Kentucky's short-yardage approach

Kentucky blew a golden opportunity to end a long home losing streak and finally deliver a big victory that could help spark the program on Saturday night against ranked Texas. The game will ultimately be remembered for the Longhorns stuffing two leap plays at the goal line similar to what happened against Tennessee in 1987. Many in Big Blue Nation were not happy with the play calling in that huge situation.

Mark Stoops is not one of those people. The dean of SEC head football coaches was asked about the decision-making after having some time to process everything. Stoops did not love the entire goal-to-go possession but would not have changed the process on third and fourth down.

“There’s plays in there that we would like to look at differently. And again, I would probably start at first-and-goal from the three, and what set we were in, and what we were doing. Play two we tried a good play-action pass and Cutter (Boley) was good. He ad-libbed and got a few yards.” Stoops explained. “They covered it well, the pass play. Play three and play four, I mean, I don’t have regret on that. I don’t. Right or wrong.”

“You watch it on the copy, on the coaches’ copy, we were inches. We were literally two inches from that ball crossing on play three. Inches. His head was across, the ball was probably in his chest.”

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Mark Stoops still believes that offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan “did a really good job” and had an excellent game plan for Texas. That led to Boley completing 79.5 percent of his 39 passes using a dink-and-dunk passing plan and the offense creating multiple scoring opportunities including a pair of successful two-minute drives to end each half. Stoops also explained that starting tailback Seth McGowan was extremely banged up at the end of the game. Dante Dowdell was clearly the best option. The Nebraska transfer was the most effective short-yardage tailback in college football last year. Dowdell was perfect on all of his third/fourth-and-short attempts until all three attempts failed on Saturday.

Kentucky believed in its situational process in the biggest down-to-down series on the year against Texas. The Wildcats ultimately came up short, but it sounds like the offense would do the same thing if the situation occurred again tomorrow.