Kentucky Goes for 2 in OT and Beats No. 10 LSU 35-34 — Wildcats' Second Straight OT Thriller

Twelve seconds and a redemption kick

The Wildcats are making a habit of this. Kentucky beats No. 10 LSU 35-34 in an overtime thriller at Kroger Field — the second straight week the Wildcats have won by going for two. This game should have been over about four times. LSU led 27-24 with 9:42 to play after wide receiver Jackson Harris — yes, the wide receiver — threw a 41-yard touchdown pass to Roman Mothershed on a trick play. Kentucky's kicker had already missed twice in the final five minutes, including once right after Sam Leavitt was sacked and stripped by Jamarrion Harkless with 4:11 left, giving the Wildcats the ball at the LSU 13. The misses kept LSU alive; the defense kept bailing Kentucky out.

Then, with the season wobbling, Zouagui got one more swing. The 33-yarder with 12 seconds left was pure — no drama, no hook — and the game went to overtime tied 27-27. It was the kind of kick that either saves a kicker's season or haunts it, and Zouagui will remember this one fondly.

The regulation story was Kentucky's ground game against an LSU defense that came in allowing 220.6 yards a game — third in the nation. C.J. Baxter gashed them for 123 yards and two touchdowns, including a 77-yard burst on Kentucky's very first play of the game. Brock Coffman added a 55-yard punt-return touchdown in the first half. By the end of the night, that vaunted LSU defense had given up 401 yards, and both teams had topped 400 yards of offense in a sold-out Kroger Field.

Overtime: Stein doesn't blink

LSU struck first in the extra period, and it took all of two plays — Leavitt on a quarterback counter, 15 yards, end zone, 34-27 Tigers after the extra point. Kentucky's response was methodical: freshman receiver Kenneth Darby — who had originally committed to LSU — hauled in a 22-yard catch to put the Wildcats at the LSU 1, and Baxter punched it in from there. Then Will Stein made the call of the night: no extra point, no second overtime. Go for two and the win.

The play was perfect. After some timeout gamesmanship between Stein and Kiffin, Kentucky motioned into an empty look, Minchey took the quarterback draw up the middle, and nobody touched him. 35-34, game over, Kroger Field losing its mind. For the second straight week, the Wildcats won by a point in overtime on a two-point conversion — they'd done the same thing at South Carolina seven days earlier. "Overtime Kentucky" is officially a thing, and it's terrifying.

Leavitt's turnovers are becoming LSU's whole season

Sam Leavitt's line reads like two different quarterbacks: 25-of-34 for 275 yards and two touchdowns — plus an interception into the hands of Kentucky safety Ty Bryant and the fourth-quarter fumble that nearly cost LSU the game. He is now the only player in the FBS to commit a turnover in every game this season, and after the game he said: "I just can't put us in that situation. At that point in the game I should just take a sack and live to take a punt."

He's right, and LSU fans know it. The Tigers led for nearly the entire fourth quarter and still needed overtime. The defense, which had been the backbone of the team, got run over on the first snap and never fully recovered. And then there's the sideshow: earlier in the week, a photo surfaced of a fabricated Kenny Minchey quote hanging in LSU's own practice facility, claiming LSU's defense hadn't seen anything like Kentucky's offensive line. The quote was made up; the photo was real. Kentucky's social media team updated the graphic after the win with the final score and the same line. Bulletin-board material works both ways, apparently.

The playoff math just got brutal for the Tigers

LSU is now 4-2 overall and 1-2 in the SEC, with both losses coming on the road — and 0-2 in true road games under Kiffin. The Tigers probably needed a clean October to survive November, and that ship has sailed. The turnovers aren't a blip; they're a pattern, and patterns like that don't fix themselves in bye weeks.

Kentucky, meanwhile, is 5-1 with a 3-1 SEC mark, two overtime thrillers in the bag, and two wins over top-10 teams this season. The Wildcats head to Norman next week to face Oklahoma — fresh off its walk-off win over No. 1 Texas — and they'll do it as the most dangerous team in the conference nobody had ranked in August. LSU gets Mississippi State at home next Saturday, which now feels less like a breather and more like a referendum.

More from a wild Week 6: Georgia survived Alabama 20-17 in Tuscaloosa, and Oklahoma walked off No. 1 Texas in the Red River game.