On Benny’s Back: Snell’s Heroic Effort Comes up Just Short
Benny Snell remembers the elation.
He remembers what it felt like to run into the end zone to give Kentucky a lead with 2:14 seconds left. He remembers thinking it was exactly how he wants to feel on a football field.
Unfortunately, he also remembers the feeling didn’t last.
“At the end of the game, I was so happy,” Snell said. “I was just so happy, because this is who we are. We did it last week and this week, this is who we are. This is Kentucky football. We’re playing, but we came up short.”
Snell simply couldn’t have done much more than he did on Saturday, running for 176 yards and three touchdowns against Ole Miss. Seventy-six of his yards came on UK’s final drive, with the sophomore putting his team on his back during a 95-yard go-ahead drive. A touchdown from Jordan Ta’amu to D.K. Metcalf with five seconds left handed the Wildcats a stinging loss and undid Snell’s good work.
“Obviously a very devastating loss,” Mark Stoops said. “You know, the bottom line is we didn’t make enough plays in critical moments. They did. I was proud of our offense taking it down and putting it in the end zone there. We came up fractions off, and it’s a difficult loss.”
No one takes losses more to heart than Snell, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a loss in which he takes over as the Southeastern Conference’s leading rusher like Saturday’s was. That’s why quarterback Stephen Johnson made sure to find Snell after the game.
“Benny did incredible,” Johnson said. “I’m so proud of him. I talked to him afterward, told him to keep his head up because he puts his heart and soul into it. You can tell this loss hit him the hardest, even though he did so well. I just told him to keep his head up. He balled. Just keep doing that every week.”
Snell must have taken Johnson’s words to heart, because he emerged from the locker room with a stiff upper lip and as positive an attitude as is possible after that kind of a defeat.
“Every loss is the same to me,” said Snell, who now has 897 yards rushing and 12 touchdowns through nine games. “All I know is next week I’m going to try to do even better next week, just like I did before. Losses are hard on us and on me especially, but Stoops is going to get us together. We’re going to learn.”
UK’s third loss of the season was a bitter one, no doubt. It ends the Wildcats’ chances in the SEC East Division – which Georgia has now clinched – but it doesn’t end their season. UK now can’t afford to let it linger too long ahead of a trip to Vanderbilt next Saturday.
“It better not be (difficult to move on),” Stoops said. “We can’t let it be. We have to get back to work. We have three big games left, and we’ve got to invest. It should hurt a lot if you invest a lot. It hurts.”
Snell has invested as much as anyone, but he doesn’t want to let that effort go to waste. So he knows Stoops can’t be the only one who will play a role in making sure that doesn’t happen.
“I’m going to tell them you can’t hang your head,” Snell said. “Our trainer, he tells me that the best guys got a short memory. And I feel like I’m one of those guys that’s really good so I gotta have a short memory. I gotta be strong for my team. I gotta have that about me so they can get up off me.”
