Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin says No. 7 Kentucky is a great team

Kentucky's defense will have to slow down Mississippi's running game for UK to go to 5-0. (Vicky Graff Photo)

What many Kentucky fans thought was a lackluster 31-23 win over Northern Illinois Saturday apparently impressed national poll voters more than it did UK fans.

Kentucky moved from No. 8 to No. 7 in the Associated Press poll — its highest ranking in 45 years — and from No. 9 to No. 8 in the coaches poll. This week’s opponent, Ole Miss, is also 4-0 and moved to No. 14 in the AP rankings and No. 11 in the coaches poll (Tennessee made the biggest move of any SEC jumping to No. 8 in the AP rankings and No. 9 in the coaches poll).

Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin was not all that happy with his team’s 35-27 win over Tulsa last week, especially after it fell behind in the first half. He said the Rebels have a “great team” coming to Oxford Saturday for the noon EST kickoff on ESPN2.

“We didn’t play well at all in the first half defensively. That’s not a good thing. We did win, so we’re 4-0. Which is the best you can be from a record standpoint at this point. But kind of more similar to the first game of the year where we played really well early and then didn’t,” Kiffin said.

All that might sound very familiar to UK fans based on things coach Mark Stoops said after his team’s win last week.

“I thought we had overcome that by the way the last two games had gone of having a really big lead like this one and coming out. Obviously we didn’t do that today. We tried everything. But we’ve got to figure out something better,” Kiffin said after the Tulsa win. “The good thing is you take parts where you say ‘We’re really good on offense and we’re really good on defense. We just weren’t consistent at it.’ That’s better.”

Here are a few more things Kiffin had to say after his team beat Tulsa.

Question: What are you expecting going into conference play after today’s performance?
Kiffin: “I don’t like it obviously in the moment. But you realize ‘OK, this is good.’ Once we watch it, once we’re able to have a lot of new things to show them where we didn’t do the right things, I hope it will get their attention and they’ll play better. You can’t pick and choose when you’re going to play good by what the score is, what stadium you’re in. Unfortunately we did that in the second half today.”

Question: What was the biggest reason the offense slowed down in the second half?
Kiffin: “I like to think I usually have pretty good answers at that. It just felt like one, we didn’t want to take a ton of risks. The game was going our direction. We got a little conservative playing to win the game. It doesn’t make myself happy. But then we just missed a few plays too.”

Question: How excited were you about the fan atmosphere?
Kiffin: “Were you at the game? I must’ve been at a different one. It is what it is. Looking around it wasn’t very full and obviously at half the students left too. When you don’t score in the second half of a game, you’re not going to criticize the fans. I’ve got to do a better job of motivating the players. If we do that, we can keep the longest win streak at 1947 or something like that going at home.”

Question: How would you evaluate quarterback Jaxson Dart’s performance?
Kiffin: “I thought, and you’d be surprised since there weren’t any points in the second half that I’d say this, with us being so heavy run statistically I thought Jaxson played well. He was even more physical in the run game than I’d like. We tried to stop him a couple times. We ideally didn’t want to run him so much but sometimes that’s what they do on the reads and even when it’s not a quarterback read if they bring an extra guy he’s got to pull it.

“I thought he was good. Smart with the ball. In every game he’s had one of those that you want to take back. He overthrew a guy, but I mean poor decisions. That was good. It really was a different game once we started moving.”