Mark Stoops took the blame for the end of the first half: "That's on me."

Kentucky won a football game by 35, holding its opponent, Ohio, to only six points. Still, there were a few head-scratching moments throughout the contest, including poor clock management leading to another botched ending to the first half, an ongoing theme for Mark Stoops-coached football.

Stoops’ latest questionable move attracted a roar of boos from the home crowd in Kroger Field as a misuse of timeouts and playcalling left Kentucky scoreless on its final drive before halftime. There was probably a lingering frustration over last week’s fourth-quarter punt against Georgia in those boos, too.

Let’s revisit the final minute of the second quarter against Ohio. Kentucky faced a 3rd-and-5 at Ohio’s 28-yard-line with 19 seconds to go on the clock. Moments earlier, Stoops burned the Wildcats’ final timeout rather than clocking the ball on second down with 26 seconds to go, leaving no room for error moving forward. At the time, SEC Network analyst Aaron Murray questioned why Stoops wouldn’t hang on to his final timeout in that situation in case he needed to send in the field goal unit.

After the timeout, Brock Vandagriff escaped a sack to throw the ball away on second down. Then, a delay of game penalty on third down moved the offense back another five yards to the Ohio 34.

Stoops could’ve sent the field goal team out for three points but opted to run one more play instead, knowing he couldn’t stop the clock if Vandagriff took a sack. Guess what? Vandagriff was sacked on 3rd-and-long, and the clock expired before the field goal team could get onto the field and snap the ball. To make matters worse, kicker Alex Raynor banked in the 51-yard-kick that didn’t count because time expired.

“Boy, that is a sequence that they hope that they don’t have to watch on tape,” SEC Network’s Dave Neal told the viewers at home. “That was not what you had in mind.” Murray added, “That was rough to watch.”

The TV broadcast then went to an on-field interview with 2024 UK Hall of Fame inductee Corey Peters, who said of the final first-half drive, “We gotta be more organized there… That was pretty much a disaster.”

Stoops: “We screwed that up.”

As expected, Mark Stoops commented on his blunder in his postgame press conference by addressing his mistake in his opening statement without waiting to be asked. Stoops said he liked Kentucky’s first-half stats but wished his team had gotten more points before halftime. The blame falls on him, he admitted.

“We screwed that up at the end of the first half,” Stoops said. “That’s on me. I knew better. I knew I should have kicked it on third (down) like I was going to. And it’s on me. With no timeouts, we had to kick it there.”

Earlier, Stoops gave his immediate explanation for the decision during his halftime radio interview with the UK Sports Network. He told Dick Gabriel that he wanted to kick the field goal on third down but everyone else wanted to go for it. “I should have gone with my gut. That’s on me.”

Mark Stoops says on radio “I wanted to kick the Field Goal on 3rd Down and everyone told me to go for it and I should have gone with my gut. Thats on me”

— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) September 21, 2024

Play-by-play of the final drive of the half