“A comedy of errors” is what can describe Kentucky’s performance against Vanderbilt on Saturday. Despite having more offensive yards than the Commodores, the Wildcats continuously shot themselves in the foot, leaving multiple scores off the board.

Coming off a bye week, the lack of discipline was concerning. It is something that Mark Stoops wants to find a solution for as Kentucky enters the toughest stretch of their schedule. That starts with a team meeting on Monday, and he discussed that on his weekly call-in show on Monday.

“The biggest thing is messaging for the week and getting ready for that team meeting, ” Stoops said. “I thought it went very well with a lot of accountability needed to be shown and done in a lot of areas. We’ve watched all that (film) and watched it together as a team. Started from there.”

This Kentucky team has more talent than Vanderbilt and South Carolina, yet they were embarrassed by both teams due to compounded and often self-inflicted mistakes. Going into week eight, they should be past that. That starts with holding each player accountable.

“You’re grown. I don’t anticipate anybody in here being sensitive because I’m calling you out in front of the whole team,” Stoops said in his message to them. “It’s not about pointing fingers, it’s about finding a solution to why we’re making the same mistakes and getting them corrected.

“If they can’t handle that, then they can move on.”

As Kentucky travels to ‘The Swamp’ to take on Florida this weekend, we will see if this week’s meeting will push things back in the right direction.

Jamon Dumas-Johnson transferred to Kentucky from Georgia, having won two national championships with the Bulldogs. In seven weeks at Kentucky, Dumas-Johnson has already experienced more losses than he did in three seasons in Athens.

Simply put, he’s not used to losing and made that clear after the Wildcats suffered an embarrassing loss to Vanderbilt.

“We gotta make some changes,” Dumas-Johnson told the media after the game. “Not try, we gotta make some changes because I’m not used to this feeling and I don’t like this feeling.”

Having come off a historical road win over Ole Miss and a bye-week, this week’s performance was certainly a letdown. The worst part though, there is nothing to point to as to why.

“No matter what message you give to a team, you gotta go out there and execute the call,” said Dumas-Johnson. “Play as a team, but I don’t think we played our ball today. The reason why? I don’t know, but we just gotta play ball. We’ve already seen what type of ball we can play as a team. That just didn’t happen today. Why? I don’t know.”

An issue that has plagued Kentucky for a large part of Stoops’ tenure, reared its head once again, a lack of discipline. The final tally, twelve penalties for 105 yards, leaving multiple scores on the field.

“They killed the whole game,” Dumas-Johnson said when asked about the penalties. “As a whole, we just gotta limit the penalties. It kills a game like that. You have no chance when you have penalties like that, especially that last drive.”

The Kentucky linebacker, clearly frustrated, is looking to use his experience to help the team get back on the right track.

“We just got calm down. I’ve been in situations like this and came out on top multiple times. Get a quick stop, three-and-out, let the offense try to do their thing, give the offense a chance. I think that’s what we did the last two minutes, but the message is to just calm down, we’re good.”

Next week the Wildcats travel to ‘The Swamp’ to take on Florida, a place they have only won in twice in 45 seasons. Sitting at 3-3, there is a possibility that Kentucky is not bowl-eligible for the first time since 2015.

The Cats fell to Vanderbilt Saturday night in disappointing fashion, with a final score of 20-13. Kentucky was marred with mistakes in all three facets of the game that led to heads hanging low leaving Kroger Field. Let’s take a look at the matchup and see where it all went wrong.

The first quarter ended with Kentucky having four penalties for 45 yards. To put that in perspective they were the least penalized team in the SEC with only 5.6 per game. They nearly surpassed that number in the first 15:00 minutes tonight.

It wasn’t all bad in the first half though, Demie Sumo-Karngbaye was able to punch the ball into the end zone giving Kentucky its first score of the night, tying the game up at 7-7. It felt like the tides were turning when D’Eryk Jackson picked off Diego Pavia giving him his first interception of the season but the Cats couldn’t capitalize. Between more costly penalties and a crucial Dane Key fumble on the 34-yard line the Cats just couldn’t keep any momentum going to sustain a drive to get points.

To close the half, poor clock management allowed Vandy to score and Diego Pavia took advantage of it. Going into the locker room Vanderbilt took a 14-7 lead.

Vanderbilt started the 2nd half with the football, Kentucky was able to hold the Dores to a field goal bringing the score to 17-7. Cue more Kentucky mistakes where the Cats looked to put points on the board but snap issues on special teams cost them the chance to close the gap. After some back and forth Vandy decided to go for a 50-yard field goal to extend the lead 20-7.

Late in the fourth quarter, it looked like there may just be a chance for Kentucky to steal a win when Brock Vandagriff found Dane Key for a 22-yard touchdown to bring it within 7. Unfortunately, another special teams snafu would lead to that extra point attempt never meeting Alex Raynor’s foot, leaving the Wildcats in that 20-13 hole that they would close the game with.

Costly Penalties

Kentucky committed 12 penalties for 105 yards in tonight’s game. During his post-game show Mark Stoops said “You don’t win games by being all psyched up and by being irrational, it comes down to discipline and execution”. With the number of penalties committed the execution for tonight’s game just wasn’t there.

Controlling the Clock

Vanderbilt came into Kroger field tonight and replicated what they did against Alabama last week. Sure they didn’t score 40 points on the Cats. But they did control the clock. They won the time of possession battle 34:35 to 25:25. It’s hard to score points when your offense is struggling but even harder when the other team is playing keep away as well as Vanderbilt has been doing lately.

3rd Down Conversion

Another stat that sticks out is Vandy’s success on 3rd down. They went 8 of 13 on 3rd downs against a defense that has done well at getting off the field in that situation. You have to wonder if some of the frustrations bled over into other areas of the game.

Box Score

However, the show must go on. Saturday, October 19th the Cats travel to Gainesville Florida to take on Billy Napier and his Gators. A Florida team that looked dead in the water just weeks ago took Tennessee to overtime tonight. I think we’ve learned you can’t overlook anyone this year in the SEC, hopefully, Stoops has the guys ready for a fight.