If Kentucky football can keep up the fight, maybe it can surprise someone — and us

With three games left in this Kentucky football season, here’s my suggested motto for the Wildcats: If we’re going down, we’re going down swinging.

The Cats went down swinging Saturday night in Knoxville.

I expected a blowout. One of those Kentucky-Tennessee at Neyland Stadium blowouts. Mark Stoops’ team had lost three straight games. It was struggling on offense. It was missing key pieces on defense, including J.J. Weaver, D’Eryk Jackson and Maxwell Hairston. It was playing the nation’s seventh-ranked team, which was a 17.5-point favorite.

I was expecting to hear Rocky Top long into the Tennessee night.

Instead, we got Tennessee 28, Kentucky 18.

We got a game. A real game. We got Kentucky leading 10-7 at the half. We got Kentucky fighting and scratching. Even when Tennessee led 21-10 in the third quarter, we got Kentucky fighting back, its backup quarterback Gavin Wimsatt finding lightly used receiver Ja’Mori Maclin, who made a terrific catch in the end zone, then another one on the two-point conversion to cut UT’s lead to 21-18 two minutes into the fourth quarter.

Alas, the Cats lost. Again. They are 3-6 overall and 1-6 in the SEC. Their chances of extending their consecutive bowl streak to nine appear slim, at best.

“It was the not the outcome we looked for, at all,” Stoops said after his team’s fourth straight defeat. “But I was proud of our effort.”

We’re not supposed to praise mere effort, of course. An E for Effort is an E for not Enough. This is big-time college athletics with big-time college athletes, many now being paid for their effort. Effort should be Expected.

Still, I was impressed by Kentucky’s resistance in the face of Tennessee’s “Dark Mode” or “Black Out” night when the Vols donned black-and-orange Halloween uniforms and the LED light show attempted to make Neyland a haunted house.

Remember, Kentucky lost 44-6 at Tennessee in 2022. That was with Will Levis at quarterback. It lost 50-16 at UT in 2016. Long before Stoops arrived on UK’s scene, the Cats were routinely trounced south of its border — 59-20 in 2000; 59-21 in 1998; 56-10 in 1996; 52-0 in 1994. The list goes on.

So now what? After a much-needed open week, the Cats entertain currently 1-8 FCS member Murray State. Then comes something less than a pleasure trip to sixth-ranked Texas on Nov. 23. Louisville arrives at Kroger Field for the Governor’s Cup renewal on Nov. 30. That’s the same Louisville that took apart No. 11 Clemson 33-21 at Clemson on Saturday night.

To be sure, Kentucky is staring directly at a 4-8 overall record and 1-7 SEC finish — the program’s worst showing since Stoops’ first season in 2013 when the Cats went 2-10 and 0-8.

Only, at this point, it’s not so much the record as is it is the finish.

“Our standard is our standard,” defensive coordinator Brad White said on Saturday. “We minced no words in our defensive meetings this week about what that standard is and what it looks like when you don’t meet it.”

To White’s eyes, that standard was not met in losses to Vanderbilt, Florida and Auburn. Given the circumstances, he believed firmly it was met Saturday.

“Wins and losses, especially in this league, they come, they go, you have great ones, you have tough losses, you have heartbreakers, all this and that,” White continued, “but your football character is what carries you through in life. Your football character carries over and bleeds into your natural character.”

To that end, White said he had some heart-to-heart talks with is players in the week leading up to the Tennessee game.

“And I’m so fricking proud of those guys, because they responded. And that’s what life is about, it’s about responding,” the coach said. “They’ve got to stand up and they’ve got to respond again. And then they’ve got to do it again. And again. We’re guaranteed three. If we want a fourth, you’ve got to win three.”

That’s it. Twelve quarters remain. And if Kentucky plays with the fight it displayed Saturday night in Knoxville, maybe it can win one it shouldn’t.

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