Two Mistakes Killed an Excellent Kentucky Two-Minute Drive

Kentucky fans prepare for the worst when the Wildcats get the ball in the final minutes of the half. The Middle Eight has been the difference in many wins and losses, and today was no exception.

There was one big difference. Kentucky actually efficiently moved the ball down the field and gave themselves a chance to cut into the deficit right before halftime.

The drive started on the Kentucky 35-yard line with 2:45 on the clock and two timeouts remaining. Cutter Boley connected on a couple of passes, and the Cats moved into Georgia territory. That’s when we saw the first mistake.

Kentucky has an Alignment Issue

On 3rd and 1, Kentucky couldn’t get lined up. Wide receivers scrambled to go to the other side of the field. Nearly 20 seconds ticked off the clock before Mark Stoops elected to call a timeout.

“We have a one-way play,” Stoops said after the game. “We only call it one way. The ball was in the middle field. Killed a little bit too much time there. Probably should have; definitely should have called timeout earlier, but I thought we had it fixed, and then we didn’t.”

“We knew what situation we were in,” Bush Hamdan added. “We call timeout. We got cover zero, we thought on that play. That’s always the cat-and-mouse game, and so we used that time. Again, we felt we had plenty of clock, the amount of plays we were going to have left in that drive, and we wanted to make sure we got it.”

Kentucky ultimately got the right play out of the timeout and converted the first down on a pitch pass to Kendrick Law to keep the drive alive. Boley completed three more passes to get the Cats inside the Georgia 10-yard line, but only 8 seconds were remaining, just enough time to take one shot to the end zone. The Dawgs’ defense forced Boley to throw it out of bounds.

“We gotta be clean in two-minute. We gotta be clean, we got to know what we’re doing. Everybody’s got to keep their — just got to be alert,” said the Kentucky quarterback.

“Two-minute is different. You got to go fast. You’re going tempo. You can’t lose your head, and you just got to stick to what we’ve been taught, stick to our coaching points. I think we did some things good on that two-minute drive, but again, we shot ourselves in the foot.”

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

That pre-snap mistake cost the Cats a chance at taking another shot or two into the end zone. Instead, they were forced to kick a field goal. Jacob Kauwe had been automatic, but it never stood a chance when he pulled it wide left.

Kentucky took two steps forward. Boley’s two-minute offense was the best we’ve seen from a Kentucky quarterback in a long time, but like so many other times this year, costly mistakes prevented the Cats from putting points on the scoreboard.