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By: LARRY VAUGHT
Kentucky once again had chances to knock off a traditional Southeastern Conference power -- and once again the Wildcats could not quite deliver.
The Wildcats trailed 23-10 at halftime against Auburn before storming back in the second half only to fall 30-27 when a drive stalled with some questionable play calling as time ran out with UK running the ball on two of its final four plays despite having no timeouts to stop the clock.
Quarterback Patrick Towles completed 27 of 44 passes for 359 yards with one interception in the end zone when UK had a chance to tie the score 14-14.
“We didn’t get it done and that’s on me. We have got to execute better. I’ve got to be more consistent. My play was not what it needs to be. I didn’t get it done and we have to move on,” Towles said. “I just have to throw the ball better. That’s on me (the interception). All our receivers were fighting so hard and laying out and stuff to catch balls for me and I really appreciate that.”
Kentucky dominated the third quarter but managed to trim the lead only to 23-20 by failing to get into the end zone when it had chances.
“A very difficult loss for our team. I felt like our players played extremely hard. But like I just told them, when you have a bunch of tough games it comes down to making some plays and give (Auburn) credit, they made the plays to win the game and we did not,” Kentucky coach Mark Stoops said.
“We made a lot of good plays and some plays and some things we need to do better. I felt like we knew it would be a another tough, hard-fought, close game. And it was. Need to make a few more plays in critical situations and start a little better. They kept us off balance in the first half and I don't feel like we weren't quite physical enough early in the game. We made some adjustments, played much better in the second half and had plenty of opportunities to gets the game tied or go up.
“We never could do that and get that momentum. But, again, it comes down to the end. I thought we had a good chance to complete that pass right down to the on the third down to Jeff Badet down the boundary and Jeff went up and was fighting to make a heck of a play and their DB made a heck of a play as well to strip it. I think right at the very end at the bottom of that route as they were coming down to the ground he got it out. That's how close it gets.”
Still, Kentucky had the ball at its own 15 with 2:06 to play and a chance to win the game. A 24-yard pass to Garrett Johnson, who had nine catches for 160 yards, got the ball to midfield. However, the next four plays were a bit perplexing.
First came a short pass to Dorian Baker, who had six catches for 66 yards, in the field of play that did not stop the clock with about one minute remaining. On second down, Boom Williams RAN THE BALL UP THE MIDDLE for a short gain. The third down pass to Badet almost got the ball inside the five, but at least stopped the clock. However, on fourth down Towles was tackled well short of the first down when forced out of the pocket.
Both Stoops and Towles defended the play call to Williams. Offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said he thought the play could split the Auburn defense for 20 to 30 yards, more than enough to put Austin MacGinnis in range for a tying field goal.
“Obviously, you can second guess every call. I get that,” Dawson said. “Forty seconds to go is a long time to me. Obviously, every call that does not work is a bad call. I will take the blame for that.”
Stoops was in no mood to be second guessed about the play calling.
“You've seen us before run the ball on third down and 15 and get the first down and you praised them. Right? Didn't work. So it's real easy to second guess him (Dawson). I don't. We were playing too high, and we thought we could split them. If we split them for 12 yards, then we're sitting in here saying, well, that's a genius call, so, it didn't work. We still had two more opportunities to get the first down,” Stoops said.
Stoops said not winning was his biggest regret about the game.
“Right now, I don't know what I would do different or anything like that. There's a lot of things we can do better and will do better. I think that I was frustrated because we didn't get off to the start that we wanted to,” the UK coach said.
Johnson said UK thought it would win the game on the final drive.
“I definitely thought we were going in and winning. We just came up short,” Johnson said. “You can’t sulk. All of us are mature enough to focus on what is ahead even though we did not win.”
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