As head coach Joker Phillips said in his postgame news conference, every single one of his players had his back Saturday night in the 31-28 upset win over South Carolina. Obviously, though, there were huge plays, players and moments that led to the win. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights.The catch (part 3): If Steve Johnson owns “the catches,” for his legendary game-winning grabs against Louisville and LSU in 2007, call Randall Cobb’s 24-yard touchdown reception Saturday night “the catch, part 3.”In thrilling fashion, Cobb caught the game-winning touchdown pass Saturday night with 1:15 left in the game, capping a perfect, methodical 12-play, 68-yard drive that spanned 6:16. Lost in the excitement of the game-winning catch was the fact that Cobb was wide open. There wasn’t a South Carolina defender within 10 yards of him.How in the heck did he get that open?”We ran a little underneath route,” head coach Joker Phillips said. “Everybody’s been talking about, ‘On third down, why do you run the underneath routes?’ I guess we’ve been hitting the underneath routes enough that the corner jumped it. Mike (Hartline) went through his read.  The corner jumped this time over the top. That’s how we got him open.”Cobb was surprised he was by himself.”Most of the game I was being double covered,” Cobb said. “I had two men on me, two men shadowing me. Chris (Matthews) was having an amazing game. That last play, Chris ran a little sit route and I ran a corner and the safety and corner jumped Chris because he had been making plays all night. They just left me wide open.”The workhorse: Of course, the corners never jump the route if Matthews doesn’t have a career game. The 6-foot-4 wide out had his best game in a UK uniform, catching 12 balls for 177 yards and a touchdown. Early in the fourth quarter he caught a pass from Hartline near the sideline, spun out of a tackle and ran it 38 yards for the score.”Chris, he’s a battler,” Phillips said. “He has our back. All he did is go out there and make play after play after play, especially on third down.”The star: But what about the guy throwing him the ball? You know, the one that always take the unwarranted criticism.He only went out and threw for 349 yards and four touchdowns on 32 of 42 attempts. It was yet another spectacular game for Hartline, who continues to have a great senior season (157 of 230 on the year for 1,791 yards and 13 touchdowns).”He had a phenomenal game,” Matthews said. “I give praise to that man because a lot of people here didn’t believe in him. They didn’t want him on the field. He proved everybody wrong countless times this season.”Both Matthews and Cobb called him the player of the game.”Coming from a guy like Randall, who is always the player of the game, that’s nice of him to say,” Hartline said. The hero: Raise your hands if you thought cornerback Anthony Mosley would be the player to seal Kentucky’s biggest regular-season win in three years. Don’t raise your hands all at once.With 11 seconds left in the game and South Carolina threatening to break UK’s hearts once again, USC quarterback Stephen Garcia lofted a fade pass from the 20-yard line into the right corner of the end zone. A completion would have won the game for the Gamecocks.But this time fate smiled on UK. Mosley picked off the pass in the end zone with four seconds left in the game, setting off an all-night celebration in Lexington.It was Mosley’s first career interception and UK’s first red-zone stop of the year.The turnaround: For the second week in a row, Kentucky’s defense looked like two different teams. In the first half, South Carolina gashed UK for 369 yards and 28 points. Marcus Lattimore looked like an all-pro tailback, burning the Cats for 71 rushing yards, 133 passing yards and three total touchdowns before halftime.It certainly didn’t hurt that Lattimore left the game in the third quarter with a sprained ankle, but UK easily played its best defensive half of the season. The Cats held the Gamecocks to 103 second-half yards and didn’t allow a single point.”Yes, (we backed off the blitzes a little bit) in spots,” defensive coordinator Steve Brown said. “There were certain things that hurt us, when you blitz a linebacker and you’re trying to peel on a running back. You would think they would pick up the blitz, but guys were coming free and they were dumping it off. We had to make sure it wouldn’t happen anymore.”And though the defense got throttled in the first half, UK would have never been in the game had the defense not forced three first-half turnovers that led to 10 points.

Related Stories

View all