Wildcats stumble, Tigers roll to rout 41-3

BATON ROUGE, La. – The message was delivered swiftly and severely on Saturday night in Death Valley: The University of Kentucky football team, improved as it is, still needs several more bricks to complete this rebuild. LSU, meanwhile, looked like a wrecking ball.

The Wildcats, sabotaged by special teams, stonewalled on offense and gashed on the ground defensively, took a 41-3 beating at Tiger Stadium. They came in needing one win to be bowl-eligible for the first time since 2010, to have a three-game SEC winning streak for the first time since 2006 and to start 3-1 in the conference for the first time since 1999.

"You get humbled really quick in this league," said UK quarterback Patrick Towles, who finished 19 of 36 for just 146 yards. "We were kind of riding high and we kind of got punched in the gut."

The Cats (5-2, 2-2) limped out of Baton Rouge having not even threatened their first win at LSU in 16 years. The Tigers (6-2, 2-2) left with a 44-3 record in Saturday night home games under coach Les Miles, still having only ever lost to No. 1- ranked teams.

Mark Stoops' group, outgained 423 yards to 217, was not ready to challenge that historical trend.

"They really took it to us from the opening kickoff return all the way through the game," the UK coach said. "Nobody likes to lose that way. To be really physically handled was what sticks out to me, along with our mistakes. We need to coach better. I take responsibility for that. We'll get it corrected and we'll move on. We can't let one game define us."

Facing his former special teams coach, Bradley Dale Peveto, and without his current special teams star, J.D. Harmon, Stoops' Cats were carved up in the kicking game. And, as he said, right from the start.

Peveto now coaches LSU's special teams and Harmon was serving a first-half suspension – not imposed by the league but by Stoops after talking with SEC officials about a near-targeting penalty that wasn't called on Harmon last week against Louisiana-Monroe. He was sorely missed in this one.

Kentucky's opening kickoff was short and the return long – 58 yards, plus a 15-yard face-mask penalty on Blake McClain. The Tigers started at the Cats' 29-yard line and punched it in from there on a 1-yard Leonard Fournette touchdown dive for a 7-0 lead after less than three minutes.

Following a UK three-and-out, LSU returned the game's first punt 17 yards to near midfield, then quickly tacked on a field goal for a 10-0 lead with 7:30 to go in the opening quarter. Another three-and-out for the Cats preceded the backbreaker: a 67-yard punt return for a touchdown on which the Tigers sprung Tre'Davious White with a crushing block on UK safety A.J. Stamps.

LSU led 17-0 with 5:47 left in the first quarter. The special-teams gaffes were far from over.

"We got outcoached. We got outplayed. We didn't show up," UK special teams coach Craig Naivar said. As for the impact of Harmon sitting out: "We're not a one-man team."

A 21-yard punt return to near midfield set up a 32-yard touchdown pass from Anthony Jennings to star wideout Travin Dural, who blew by cornerback Fred Tiller along the right sideline and hauled in the deep ball for a 24-3 lead with 44 seconds left in the first half.

Then the Tigers added insult to injury. Kicking off from its own 20 after a personal foul on the touchdown, LSU squibbed it and Kentucky's return team watched the ball bounce between them. No Wildcat pounced on it, so the Tigers did – at the UK 37.

The sixth special-teams mistake of the half led to an LSU field goal and 27-3 lead at the break.

Kentucky's defense had actually stiffened for a long stretch, forcing three consecutive punts in the first half, but its offense never got much traction against a fast, furious Tigers defense and the thunderous noise of an announced crowd of 101,581.

"It was ugly," offensive coordinator Neal Brown said. "Didn't have them prepared to play. Didn't play well enough, didn't coach well enough. Got beat in a lot of one-on-one situations and didn't make plays. Didn't start very well, got in way too many third-and-long situations. Not us, not very many people in the country are going to be successful in third-and-long against these guys."

The Cats' most productive first-half drive, a 13-play march to the LSU 11, only produced a field goal. Then, with the defense heating up and a chance to make it a game before halftime, Kentucky went for it on fourth-and-2 from the Tigers' 29 and tailback Jojo Kemp was swallowed up for a loss.

That play came on a direct snap out of the "Wildcat" formation that gashed South Carolina but has subsequently been sniffed out by both ULM and LSU.

"That was a big turning point in the game. I don't know if we were good enough to win it – I don't think with the way we were playing – but we would've made it a lot more competitive, for sure," said Brown, who doesn't believe opponents are adapting to stop the Wildcat. "I'm not sure they schemed it any better. We just got beat in some one-on-one situations."

The Tigers dropped the hammer in the third quarter, thanks to tailback Terrence Magee. He set up a pair of his own touchdown runs with breakaway plays: 38 yards before a 9-yard score, then 35 yards before a 23-yard TD. His second made it 41-3 with 3:27 left in the third and fans flooded the exits, all but emptying the cavernous stadium.

LSU's 303 rushing yards are the most UK has allowed under Stoops.

"That's what we'd like to look like some day," he said of the Tigers.

Even worse for the Cats: Talented freshman tailback Stanley "Boom" Williams took a nasty helmet-to-helmet shot on a third-quarter kickoff return and lay motionless on the turf for several minutes in a scary scene.

Stoops rushed onto the field to check on him and players from both sides took a knee as Tiger Stadium went silent. Eventually, he sat up and the crowd cheered as he stood and slowly made his way to the sideline, wobbly and with the assistance of two medical staff members. Stoops said he'd been evaluated for a "head injury," but was well enough to travel back to Lexington with the team.

The bad news: it only gets harder from here. Kentucky will host top-ranked Mississippi State and Heisman frontrunner Dak Prescott next week. There had been a great deal of excitement about that showdown before Saturday night. Now, surely some trepidation.

"We'll see how we respond," Stoops said. "We'll see how resilient we are and how tough we are."

Kyle Tucker can be reached at (502) 582-4361. Follow him on Twitter @KyleTucker_CJ.