Kentucky could not beat Ole Miss in a shoot-out. The Wildcats had to make Ole Miss play their game and that’s by turning it into a slugfest. In a game where the margin of error was narrow, the Wildcats got the hard, nasty yards they needed to ultimately come away with a win.

“We played it our way. That was a dirty game, just a hard-fought, tough game,” Mark Stoops said minutes after taking down the No. 6 team in the country on the road.

“And I’m just proud of our coaches for staying the course. It’s not just coach-speak when I say that. Our coaches have stayed the course, our players have stayed the course, and we’ve gotten better each week, and we needed to go play very well this week and we did that. I’m just proud.”

The defense brought the nasty. When Ole Miss wide receivers caught the ball, they were tackled right away. Take Tre Harris out of the equation — he had a couple of long catch-and-runs but was mostly bottled up in the RPO game — and the Rebels only had 35 yards after the catch. The Ole Miss rushing attack averaged just 2.5 yards after contact.

From a practical standpoint, those hard, nasty yards were felt on third down. Ole Miss went 1-for-10 on third down because they only had two third down attempts of four yards or less. Kentucky made them earn every single yard.

Nasty Yards Led to Explosives for Kentucky Offense

The Kentucky offense leaned heavily on the rushing attack early in the season. After a strong start, the Wildcats couldn’t just lean on the front seven to get four yards per carry. Nevertheless, Kentucky couldn’t completely abandon the rushing attack. Stoops asked his players to strain to create manageable situations for Brock Vandagriff.

“The biggest thing for us, and I told them at halftime, that we got to continue to get those nasty, dirty runs. We got to get to three, we got to get to 2-3-4-5 (yards). That sets up everything else,” said the Kentucky head coach. “I thought Bush was plenty aggressive enough and kept them off balance.”

The Wildcats did a good job of staying out of obvious passing situations that allowed the Ole Miss defense to tee off on the quarterback. It gave Vandagriff enough time to complete seven passes of 15 yards or more, their most explosive passing performance to date.

Kentucky is playing within thin margins. Those hard, nasty yards are the difference between winning and losing for these Wildcats.

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