Kentucky has now lived through the same kind of finish two weeks in a row, and this time Kenny Minchey was the one who settled it.
For the second straight week, the Wildcats reached overtime with a chance to win on a two-point play. For the second straight week, they converted. And once the ball was snapped, the ending came fast.
“ I’m running out of lives after that one. Wow,” Will Stein said after the win.
“There’s really not a lot of words right now. I’m pretty shocked, in shock.
I shouldn’t say shocked, I’m in shock.”
“I just turned 21. My blood pressure should not be high,” CJ Baxter joked following the victory.
Unlike the South Carolina finish, when Kentucky had already planned to go for the win and used a play it had been drilling for months, this one came from a concept the Wildcats had only added this week. Minchey understood what he saw, trusted the read, and took off.
“ There was nobody in the middle, so I figured I’d run there,” Minchey described the winning play. “We obviously had our play called, not necessarily a part of it.
Well, I guess it’s a part of it. It’s just what my read told me to do: run it in for the 2-point.”
The quarterback slid into the end zone with ease, then followed it with a shoulder shrug that fit the moment perfectly.
“I don’t even know. It was just wide open.
I ran in,” said Minchey. “Then I looked up and saw the scoreboard, realized it was over, and everybody just ran in to me to celebrate with my teammates, coaches.
It was just a surreal moment.”
The path to that finish was messy. Kentucky brought out the Big Blue Wall package with Willie Rodriguez, which forced Lane Kiffin to burn a timeout.
Then the Wildcats tried to get LSU to jump offsides, and Stein had to call a timeout. Only after that did Kentucky finally get the play off.
Stein said he felt good about the call before the South Carolina game because he expected an open receiver. This one, he said, was more of a straightforward base concept. Even so, he didn’t have much time to process what happened once the ball was snapped.
“I didn’t really know what happened,” Stein said. “ I was watching the routes and then we started rushing the field. It was pretty crazy.”
That word - crazy - might be the best fit for the whole sequence. But through the chaos, Minchey never looked rattled. His calm under pressure is a big reason Kentucky sits at 5-1 with a pair of Top 10 wins.
In Other News...
Kentucky Had LSU Pointing Fingers Instead Of Taking Care Of Business
Lane Kiffin spent much of the postgame trying to dissect the details of LSUs overtime loss to Kentucky, and the conversation quickly shifted from the Tigers missed chances to the officiating. He took issue with a fourth-and-goal spot and several other calls, then spent time defending his own late-game decision to punt on fourth-and-1 rather than keep the offense on the field. It was the kind of aftermath that can make a loss feel even messier, especially in a game that went all the way to overtime.
For Kentucky, the bigger takeaway was less about any single whistle and more about forcing LSU into a night of explanations instead of execution. Kiffin has already been willing to point to outside factors after previous losses, including crowd noise, and this one fit that pattern with the Tigers searching for reasons after letting a winnable game slip away. The Wildcats did enough to leave LSU talking about calls and decisions, which is often the sign a close SEC game has tilted the way a home team wants. [Read more 🡒]
Kentuckys Transfer Surge Is Suddenly Fueling A Real SEC Threat
The transfer portal has become one of the quickest ways to reshape a roster, and Kentucky has a real candidate helping drive that conversation in Week 6. Kenny Minchey was among the players drawing attention in a recent ranking of the top transfer portal performers in college football, a list built off what players actually did on the field and how much they swung games for their teams. For the Wildcats, that kind of production matters because it speaks to more than depth - it speaks to whether the new pieces can help turn Kentucky into something more dangerous inside the SEC.
Mincheys inclusion also puts Kentucky in a larger national frame alongside names such as UCLAs Wayne Knight and Oregon States Braden Atkinson, but the Wildcats interest is obvious: they need transfer additions to translate into wins, not just roster buzz. If Kentuckys surge is real, it will be because these newcomers keep showing up in the moments that decide games, and because the line between promising portal help and genuine conference threat keeps getting thinner. [Read more 🡒]
Kentucky Has A Real Week 6 AP Poll Respect Case
The Week 6 Associated Press poll opened up a familiar debate about how much the rankings really reward what teams have done on the field versus what voters thought of them back in August. Texas fell from No. 1 to No. 7 after a close loss, Oklahoma still found itself unranked even after beating the No. 1 team, and James Madison remained outside the top 25 despite being unbeaten. In that kind of landscape, Kentuckys place becomes harder to ignore, especially when the discussion turns to how SEC teams are stacked against one another.
For the Wildcats, the case is not just about one good result or a flattering stretch, but about whether they are being judged with the same standard as teams with bigger preseason reputations. If the AP is leaning too heavily on early assumptions, Kentucky is exactly the kind of program that can get squeezed by it, even while stacking a rsum that looks better than some of the teams sitting above or around it. The question now is whether the next poll finally reflects that reality, or whether the Wildcats are still waiting for voters to catch up. [Read more 🡒]