Lane Kiffin was prepared for Kentucky to play for the win in overtime of the Wildcats’ 35-34 win over the No. 10 Tigers.
After Kentucky tied the game on a field goal with just seconds to go, LSU got the ball to start overtime. The Tigers immediately scored on a TD run by Sam Leavitt. And Kiffin said he told defensive coordinator Blake Baker that the game wasn’t going to go to a second overtime.
“I said once we scored, I told Blake, I said Blake, obviously would love for you to stop [Kentucky] but if you don’t, you better have the best 2-point call ready because they’re going to go for two just like they did the week before.”
Sure enough, that’s exactly what Kentucky did. And QB Kenny Minchey ran untouched right up the middle for the game-winning conversion after LSU’s defenders vacated the middle of the field.
Minchey said after the game that he was “very surprised” that he had so much room to run into the end zone.
“Not necessarily a designed run, but obviously have the opportunity to do that, especially down low in the red zone for the 2-point conversion,” Minchey told reporters of the play. “The defense can play their hand in terms of what they want to take away and obviously the void, or the thing you can attack on offense is QB run. So it opened up, and we ran it in.”
It was Kentucky’s second consecutive 35-34 win in overtime after the Wildcats got a game-winning 2-point conversion against South Carolina in Week 5.
The game went to overtime after Kentucky kicker Adam Zouagui missed two field goals in the fourth quarter. Those misses, Kiffin said, played into LSU’s decision to punt the ball back to the Wildcats with less than two minutes to go. LSU had a fourth-and-1 at its own 43-yard line with 1:46 to go after a Kentucky timeout. Instead of going for the game-winning first down, Kiffin chose to punt.
“Obviously when things go the other way, you look at yourself first and you know, I thought about going for a fourth-and-1 and then talk myself out of it, you know, the way their kicker had missed two field goals already and that we’d punt them deep and play defense,” Kiffin said.
“And obviously in the worst scenario, even if they drove down and made it we’d go to overtime and that’s what happened.”