Players struggle to explain Dixon’s big night

After Saturday’s loss to Mississippi State, none of the players — none of the players available to the media, anyway — could figure out how the 31-24 loss went down.

Sure, State’s Anthony Dixon ran 33 times for 252 yards, besting his previous career high by almost 80 yards.

Yeah, UK’s defense surrendered the big plays they had yet to surrender this year.

Everybody noticed that.

But how did it all happen Saturday, on such an emotion-driven Homecoming Halloween?

“Halloween, so many alumni, we had the blackout going,” said Randall Cobb, referring to the fans’ directive to wear all-black in the stands. “It was just so many things, and we didn’t play off any of that emotion.”

Prior to Saturday, Dixon was the Southeastern Conference’s third-leading rusher. The two backs outranking him, Alabama’s Mark Ingram and Auburn’s Ben Tate, had played UK earlier in the season.

Ingram and Tate ran for a combined 272 yards against the Cats, a number Dixon very well could have broken with one more of those counter plays that spooked UK so badly, so many times.

Having held those two backs to big-but-not-gigantic games, how did Dixon slip through the cracks?

The players didn’t know. “I honestly don’t have any idea,” Corey Peters said. Defensive coordinator Steve Brown offered a bit of an idea, saying the schematics and the personnel within those schemes weren’t right.

But Dixon kept abusing UK in the same way, busting plays up the middle and using that counter play to create a little misdirection.

If he kept giving UK the same looks, why didn’t the failing schemes change during the game to try and make up a little ground?

Turns out most of the time, Dixon — bigger than UK starting linebacker Danny Trevathan — didn’t confuse the defense as much as he just ran around it, through it or over it.

“It was one of those deals where you think you’re in great shape and all of a sudden, bam, he pops out,” Brown said. “We’ll have to look at it very closely and see how it went wrong, why it went wrong.”

Another reason it went wrong: big plays. For a defense that has been so good about bending but not breaking on big play situations, the Cats gave up several on Saturday.

Dixon kept matriculating the ball up the field, but one particularly long run of 44 yards stood out.

Then backup quarterback Chris Reif suddenly entered the game, reeled off a run of 53 yards, and just as quickly was back on the sideline for the rest of the night.

And particularly painful was the play-action pass on the option from otherwise neutralized Tyson Lee to O’Neal Wilder, a 67-yard score.

“That’s the thing that’s discouraging. They did a nice job of the one pass they had, but that’s the only one they had,” Brown said. “They go to the speed option. Your guy’s supposed to cover a guy, and bam, big play touchdown. That’s disheartening as heck but hopefully it’ll be a lesson for all of us to grow from.”

Better grow from it quickly. If UK doesn’t beat Georgia on the road or Tennessee on Senior Day, UK’s ticket to its fourth-straight bowl, perhaps in Nashville’s Music City Bowl, has to be punched Nov. 14 in Nashville’s Vanderbilt Stadium.

So how do the Cats learn from their Halloween scare?

Hit the film room and figure out what happened, Peters said.

“I don’t know what happened, but I’m intent on finding out,” Peters said.

At least Anthony Dixon is behind them for the last time, like he was 33 times Saturday.

James Pennington is a journalism senior. E-mail jpennington@kykernel.com.