OXFORD, Miss. — With little left to play for, the Florida Gators tried to play spoiler.
Once again, the target was Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin. This time, though, his Rebels rallied for a 34-24 come-from-behind win to keep alive their CFP hopes in what could have been his final home game in Oxford.
“They battled,” UF interim coach Billy Gonzales said of the Gators. “They’re competitors. I’m proud of them. We just came up short.”
A season after Florida upset Ole Miss to knock the Rebels out of the CFP, the Gators arrived as two-touchdown underdogs amid a head coaching search and eyeing Kiffin, who sits atop UF’s wish list to replace Billy Napier. But after his team picked up a 10th win for the third consecutive season, an Ole Miss first, Kiffin was focused on getting the Rebels to the finish line and into the 12-team playoff field.
“To even talk about it right now would be so disrespectful to our players and what they did today,” he said of UF’s interest, not to mention his own in the Gators’ opening.
For much of Saturday night at sold-out Vaught-Hemingway Stadium, things appeared bleak for the No. 7 Rebels (10-1, 6-1 SEC).
But a 59-yard run by tailback Kewan Lacy on the final play of a scoreless third quarter set up his 1-yard run for a 27-24 lead.
The Gators (3-7, 2-5) responded behind resurgent quarterback DJ Lagway to reach the Rebels’ 30. But facing 3rd-and-5, the sophomore’s pass across his body while rolling left was tipped by edge rusher Suntarine Perkins and into the hands of safety Wydett Williams Jr.
“We were in field-goal position,” Gonzales said. “Great players and competitors always want the ball in their hands. They want to be able to make the play. But we’ve got to make great decisions.”
Leading 24-20 at halftime, Florida didn’t score again while Lagway failed to make the big plays he had earlier.
‘We didn’t play really well defensively at all in the first half, and there were big pass plays,” Kiffin said. “At halftime we said, ‘We have to keep them in front of us and just make him earn it and see if we can get him to throw a pick at some point.’ ”
A week after he was benched after throwing three interceptions, Lagway had a costly one while finishing 16-of-31 for 218 yards, including a 57-yard touchdown to J. Michael Sturdivant to give UF a 21-17 lead.
With UF down 10-0 and with just 10 yards in two possession, Lagway came alive with a 10-yard run on 3rd-and-9, then followed it with a 47-yard strike to TJ Abrams and a 12-yard run to the Ole Miss 5. Two plays later, Lagway rumbled into the end zone for his first career touchdown.
“Finally got over the top of people. Been waiting on that all season,” he said. “It was good to have some success. Overall, none of it really matters, though. We didn’t come out with the ‘W.’”
Lagway had a chance to be a hero after the Gators stopped Ole Miss inside the 5-yard line, trailing 27-24 with 2:42 remaining. Consecutive incompletions by Rebels quarterback Trinidad Chambliss had given the Gators the ball on their 3, the second time Ole Miss was inside the UF 5 but failed to score points.
Lagway and Co. could not dig their way out. An incompletion on 4th-and-9 set up a 4-yard touchdown run on first down by Lacy, who finished with 224 rushing yards and three touchdowns to give him a school-record 19.
“He’s a great player, but we shot ourselves in the foot and we got to do better,” sophomore linebacker Myles Graham said. “We got to be more disciplined in our gaps, we got to make more tackles, and we got to be more physical up front.
“He’s a good player but we beat ourselves.”
Ole Miss tailback Kewan Lacy ran for 224 yards and three touchdowns as the Rebels beat Florida 34-24 Saturday night in Oxford. (Photo by Justin Ford/Getty Images)
Before outscoring Florida 14-0 in the fourth quarter, Ole Miss had been in peril against a team with an interim head coach and coming off a 31-point loss. The Gators also had lost 18 straight games on the road while Ole Miss had lost once in 21 games at home since the start of the 2023 season.
The Gators were not going lay down a week after it looked like they did at Kentucky.
“That’s what we signed up for,” Graham said. “We’re in the SEC; it’s going to be a dogfight every week and that’s how we want it to be. But we got to finish.”
Last November in the Swamp, Kiffin’s team couldn’t make plays at the end of a 24-17 loss against a surging Florida team playing on Senior Day in one of college football’s toughest environments. In danger of a repeat Saturday night in Oxford, the Rebels did not squander their season again.
“There was a lot there bad early on,” Kiffin said. “I just felt like, ‘OK, this is a lot of stuff to overcome, but that shows that we are potentially a really, really good team.’ ”
Edgar Thompson can be reached at egthompson@orlandosentinel.com