I get it. UK turned out to be trash and we should have won, on its face. I get it. It came down to this one stupid 4th down play.
I also watched Kentucky drag us through that game all day. They played tough and made it a tough game and their style of play matches up poorly with ours. That game was dicey the whole day.
The game we should be referencing in the discussions about "Well, if they'd beat X then the UGA game wouldn't be so bad blah blah blah" is the LSU game.
I know LSU is better than UK. I know LSU turned out to be a good team. But I've NEVER seen an Ole Miss team beat itself in so many ways and on so many plays as I did in that game. Between the two losses, we gave away the LSU game way more than we gave away the UK game. The LSU loss was terrible and we played like absolute garbage and beat ourselves. That game could have been over in the first half.
Until the second half against OU, this has been a team that can come out with a script and get a lead but doesn't have the intangible "it" factor to take it over the edge and bury anyone. They've now done that for 6 quarters. We will see if they can do it this weekend.
But, the LSU game is the one they let get away because they lacked the ability to put them away when they had control. They had more control of that game than they did the UK game.