VAUGHT: Cats can't afford missed opportunities against Gators

By LARRY VAUGHT

With the season-ending knee injury to quarterback Terry Wilson late in the third quarter of Saturday's 38-24 win over Eastern Michigan garnering most of the attention as it should, but with Florida coming up this week the Cats cannot miss scoring opportunities like they did in game two.

A.J. Rose lost a fumble at the 1-yard line. Kavosiey Smoke had a scoring run negated by a holding penalty. Chance Poore missed a 49-yard field goal.

Instead of scoring up to 35 points in the first half, UK had 17.

"The fumble going in, just there is no excuse for that. Then penalty, just things of that nature. We're able to overcome them, but as the competition gets better we got to get those cleaned up," Stoops said.

Translation: Make those mistakes this week and the Gators will start another win streak over UK.

"I think there is no question we feel like we left some (points) out there. So, you know, two of them -- two in the first half was just touching on the fumble and the penalty and left points right there. We did," Stoops said. "Give them credit. They played tough, they played sound. They don't make it easy; you got to beat them. They don't just give you things.
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Offensive coordinator Eddie Gran obviously felt like the UK offense gave away a lot and was even more frustrated than Stoops after the game.

"It was ridiculous. We had a chance to score 50. It's inexcusable," Gran said. "Two fumbles, I can't even discuss it right now. It's inexcusable is what it is."

What about the offense having three drives of 10 or more plays? Wasn't that good?

"That was good. What we did do well, we did well," Gran said. "Nine of 14 on third down (conversions). Had a chance to be great and convert 12 of 14. If you start to do that, you are doing pretty special stuff. That's one of the things we said we had to get better at (in game two) and we did."

Kentucky also had two 90-yard scoring drives.

"We have done that here before. We have been grinders and ground it out before," Gran said. "Goes back to kids making plays. When you have 90-yard drives you are making third downs."