The struggles continued for Kentucky Saturday night.
The Wildcats suffered their seventh straight Southeastern Conference home loss with a 24-10 loss to Auburn. Kentucky, which plays its final two league games on the road, went 0-4 in home conference games this season and failed to win an SEC home game for the first time since 2013.
"(We) just got beat — bottom line, we got beat," Kentucky coach Mark Stoops said. "(We) didn't play good enough in any phase for us to win, and that's discouraging."
The Tigers (3-5, 1-4 SEC) snapped a four-game conference losing streak and scored 24 unanswered by using a grinding rushing attack to wear down the Wildcats during the last three quarters. Auburn, which lost three of its four conference games by 10 points or less, finally had a breakthrough. Kentucky dropped its third straight league game since a 20-17 win over Ole Miss on Sept. 28.
"It's like that every week (and the SEC is) just brutal," Stoops said. "It's hard and it's tough. It's a tough league and we have to man up and it's this bottom line. There's nowhere to run, nowhere to hide and our players know that. And they got to get back to work and we have to do a better job."
Auburn, which had minus eight yards rushing in the first frame, turned to Jarquez Hunter, a senior, to help avoid another conference collapse. Hunter rushed for 278 yards and two touchdowns to spark the Tigers’ successful turnaround.
Sparked by Hunter’s performance, the Tigers rushed for 326 yards and finished with 498 total yards. Hunter’s final tally was the most rushing yards by an opposing player in stadium history.
The Wildcats (3-5, 1-5) were without veteran running backs Demie Sumo-Karngbaye and Chip Trayanum and relied on freshman running backs Jason Patterson and Jarion Wilcox. Patterson had a 23-yard carry and Wilcox scored his first career touchdown as Kentucky built a 10-0 lead in the first quarter.
Kentucky had 115 yards in the first frame but managed just 109 during the final three quarters. The Wildcats finished with with 70 yards rushing.
Auburn scored on two of its final two drives of the half. The Tigers failed to get off a field goal attempt as time expired in the first half, leaving the score in a 10-10 deadlock at the break.
Auburn, which had just 38 yards in the first quarter, including minus eight yards rushing, collected 158 total yards and rushed for 74 yards in the second frame. Kentucky managed just 30 yards and three first downs in the second quarter.
Relying on a rushing attack, the Tigers rushed the ball 11 times on a 14-play scoring drive to take a 17-10 lead with 7:53 remaining in the third quarter.
In desperation mode, the Wildcats replaced starting quarterback Brock Vandgriff with backup Gavin Wimsatt in the second half. Wimsatt threw an interception at the goal line in the fourth quarter.
Brock Vandagriff threw for 120 yards and one touchdown to pace the Kentucky offense.
Stoops said he planned on using Wimsatt and didn't want the team's struggles to be placed on either player.
"I don't need that to dominate the headlines," Stoops said. "We're not playing very well. It's never on one person, you know. So if it's Gavin or if it's Brock, whoever it is — they can only do so much. It's a team effort. I know everybody likes to concentrate on the quarterback position and I know it's a story. The bottom line is we're not playing winning football on the offensive side, and I'd rather that be the headline than on any one person."
Gametracker: Kentucky at Tennessee, 6:30p.m. Central Time, Saturday. TV/Radio: ESPN or SECN, UK Radio Network (SuperTalk 94.3 WKYX and WLLE - WiLLiE 102) .
Photo by Ethan Rand, Courtesy of UKAthletics.com
