Aidan Laros quietly stole the show in Kentucky's first SEC win

While Kentucky’s defense deserved most of the headlines Saturday night, Aidan Laros quietly had one of the best games of anyone in the road white and blues. Kentucky’s veteran punter flipped the field again and again in the 10–3 win at Auburn, pinning the Tigers inside their own 20-yard line on all six of his punts.

Laros averaged 44.8 yards per punt with a long of 57, and two of those went for 50-plus yards. In a low-scoring grind that was all about field position, his punting tilted the game in Kentucky‘s favor time and again.

“Our special teams played lights out,” Stoops said after the game. “Of course, the defense played great all night, but field position, the punting, you know, getting first downs, flipping the field was huge. And that goes unnoticed in the stat sheet.”

It was the kind of performance that would make Max Duffy proud, and you know he was probably grinning somewhere in Australia watching Laros drop another inside the 10.

Kentucky needed every inch of that field position battle to finally break through in the SEC win column, and Laros’ leg made sure they controlled it all night.

“I thought the punt game was huge,” Stoops added in his postgame comments.

Kauwe stays steady

It wasn’t just Laros doing his job on special teams. Jacob Kauwe provided Kentucky’s first points of the night with a 48-yard field goal midway through the second quarter, one of the only scores by either team in the entire game. The kick sailed straight down the middle and would have been good from well beyond 50.

Like Laros, his consistency has quietly become one of Kentucky’s strengths. He’s made 10 of 13 field goals and all 19 extra points this season. Two of his three misses were from 50+.