It felt as if the Kentucky football program had been skating on thin ice for the last few weeks.<\/p>\n
With all eyes on how Mark Stoops and his team will respond to adversity, it was a big moment hosting the 21st-ranked Longhorns on Saturday night. You have to give the Cats credit, they did anything but lie down.<\/p>\n
After a boring three quarters of play, the last ten minutes provided a game\u2019s worth of excitement. The Cats couldn\u2019t take advantage of a world-class performance from the defense and dropped a heartbreaker 16-13 in overtime. The end result isn\u2019t as bad as getting blown out, but it still stings deep.<\/p>\n
The only thing that kept the first half from being scoreless on both sides was a big punt return that set up UT\u2019s only touchdown. Both offenses struggled to make anything meaningful happen – It was ugly. A tough watch for a Saturday night SEC football game. Despite outgaining Texas 180-93 in total yardage, UK somehow trailed 7-0 on the scoreboard. A bright spot was Cutter Boley completing 16 passes on 21 attempts and continuing to show signs of development. But no points to show for it were a reflection of the Cats\u2019 continued woes on offense. Sure, it was boring, but going to the locker room only down seven points wasn\u2019t the worst position to be in.<\/p>\n
2. UK Defense Plays Lights-Out.<\/p>\n
Even if the offense is struggling, you can typically count on a Brad White coached defense to keep the Cats within striking distance, and that\u2019s exactly what happened tonight. Two special teams breakdowns on punt returns were the only reason Texas sniffed the end zone.<\/p>\n
The UK defense played inspired football and had Arch Manning running for his life all night. It was an impressive, dominant performance. Texas only gained 179 yards in a game that went to overtime. It was a shame to see the masterpiece of a performance wasted away.<\/p>\n
3. Cutter Boley flashing greatness.<\/p>\n
There is no denying that the hometown product is giving it everything he has to make the most of his opportunity to play quarterback at the University of Kentucky.<\/p>\n
Tonight the redshirt freshman would finish the game 31\/40 for 258 yards to go along with 45 rushing yards and a touchdown.<\/p>\n
Cutter Boley\u2019s play isn\u2019t always perfect, but he isn\u2019t afraid of the moment and has proven he\u2019ll put his body on the line to move the chains. As frustrating as the offense can be, it\u2019s the flashes of greatness from Boley that keep you drawn in. His execution of a one-minute drill to set up the late-game-tying field goal with under ten seconds was remarkable.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s becoming clear that #8 has the chance to be a star.<\/p>\n
4. Arch Manning Struggles<\/p>\n
The story with the Longhorns always starts and ends with Arch Manning.<\/p>\n
His notoriety has brought additional attention to a Texas football program that already featured some of the top players in the country. Manning was aiming to build some positive momentum coming off one of his best games of the season last week, defeating Oklahoma 23-6 in the Red River Rivalry. The Wildcat defense neutralized the sophomore in the first half, only allowing seven completions, accumulating a modest 70 yards. He was also sacked twice in the first two quarters.<\/p>\n
Manning\u2019s offensive line does him no favors as he was pressured all night long, resulting in numerous big hits. This will not be a game that he\u2019ll look back on fondly. The Longhorns finished with just 179 total yards of offense.<\/p>\n
Two long punt returns by Ryan Niblett turned out to be the biggest plays of the game.<\/p>\n
Each one set up a Texas score and prevented UK\u2019s defense from imposing its will like they\u2019d done all game. The game never would have made it to overtime had those punt returns been eliminated. It makes a very frustrating loss that much harder to swallow. Even when the Cats are doing something positive, somewhere else flounders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It felt as if the Kentucky football program had been skating on thin ice for the last few…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10717,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[4973,27,29,28],"class_list":["post-10716","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-kentucky-wildcats-football","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10716","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10716"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10716\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10716"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10716"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10716"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}