LEXINGTON, Ky. — They needed three yards. In the end, that’s all it was. Three lousy yards.

Under the Kroger Field lights, LSU’s defense opened the middle of the field and left Kenny Minchey a clean, green path straight up the gut. Minchey took the snap, tucked the ball and ran untouched through it. He crossed the goal line standing up. Kentucky had a 35–34 overtime victory. LSU had another long, quiet trip home.

Kentucky made history—the first FBS team to win consecutive games by one point in overtime since overtime began in 1996. A week earlier at South Carolina, Minchey threw to Willie Rodriguez for the winning two points. This time, he kept it. Two Saturdays. Two 35–34 victories. Both settled in the first overtime, with Will Stein putting the whole game on one play and his quarterback delivering.

The Tigers had enough chances to win this one three times over. They led in the fourth quarter. Blake Baker’s defense survived two turnovers without giving up a point. Kentucky missed two late field goals. Even in overtime, LSU backed the Wildcats into third-and-eight, needing a touchdown just to keep breathing. Every time the Tigers seemed to have Kentucky cornered, Minchey found a way out.

Joe Sloan outlasted Blake Baker. The offensive coordinator LSU showed the door last fall got the last answer against his old colleague. Baker spent most of the second half shutting down the offense Sloan brought to Lexington. The Wildcats kept picking the lock. Finally, they came through the middle, right where a purple-and-gold jersey should have been.

For Lane Kiffin’s Tigers, now 4–2 overall and 1–2 in the SEC, the damage goes well beyond another miserable ride home. Their margin for error is gone. ESPN’s Allstate Playoff Predictor put LSU’s chances at 46 percent with a win and 14 percent with a loss. To finish 10–2, the Tigers must run the table: Mississippi State, at Auburn, Alabama, Texas, at Tennessee, at Arkansas. The brutal part of the schedule is still coming. LSU has already spent its cushion.

It never should have come down to the last three yards. Start with the one LSU chose not to try for.

Late in regulation, fourth-and-one. LSU ahead 27–24. Kentucky out of timeouts. Kiffin kept his offense on the field, with a big lineman in the backfield and another first down close enough to reach. Then he called timeout. Sam Leavitt walked off. The punt team came on.

“I was going to go,” Kiffin said afterward. Then he talked himself out of it.

Kentucky would have to drive into the wind. Adam Zouagui had missed his last two field goals. Baker’s defense was playing well. Kiffin figured that even if the Wildcats drove down and made a kick, LSU would still have overtime. He trusted his defense to do what it had been doing all half. There was football logic in the decision. There was also Minchey, waiting for another turn.

He took over at his own 19 with 1:37 left and no timeouts. He played like he had all day. DJ Miller caught one for 16 yards. Ja’Kayden Ferguson gathered another for 15. Another completion kept Kentucky moving. Kenny Darby added a 19-yard catch. Minchey ran to the sideline himself. LSU kept giving ground, and Zouagui kept getting closer.

Then came the throw to Rodriguez: ruled incomplete, reviewed, overturned. A four-yard completion. Kentucky was in range. On the sideline, Zouagui practiced the point where his foot met the ball and took deep breaths, trying to recover the stroke that had deserted him. Kiffin used his last regulation timeout to make him wait a little longer. The 33-yard kick went through with 12 seconds left. The same leg that twice spared LSU had just taken away its lead.

“We’re one yard away from the game being over,” Kiffin said. On third-and-10, Leavitt hit Winston Watkins Jr. for nine yards. One more on that play, or one on fourth down, and LSU could have kept the ball until the clock ran out. Instead, Kiffin asked his defense for one more stand. Kentucky drove 66 yards to tie it.

Blaming the whole loss on the punt would let too much else off the hook. LSU’s trouble started long before Kiffin had to choose between his offense and his defense. On Kentucky’s opening possession, Davhon Keys came up the middle on a run blitz, and CJ Baxter ran right past the pressure for 77 yards. Later, Brock Coffman took a punt back 55 yards for a touchdown. The Tigers were piling up long possessions while the Wildcats swallowed the field in great bites.

Before halftime, Minchey scored on fourth-and-goal from the 1. LSU held the ball for more than 20 minutes in the first half, outgained Kentucky 236–171 and still trailed 21–17. One defender out of his gap. One missed tackle on special teams. All that patient offensive work, and the Tigers were still chasing. “If you don’t execute, you don’t execute,” Kiffin said.

LSU had some beautiful answers of its own. A series of exchanges left tight end Zach Grace alone for Leavitt’s 22-yard touchdown pass. Jackson Harris held onto a 10-yard scoring catch through a heavy hit. Later, trailing in the fourth quarter, Harris caught Leavitt’s 16-yard pass on third-and-seven. On the next play, he became the passer.

Leavitt threw to Harris behind the line, Kentucky stepped toward the apparent screen, and Harris sent the ball downfield to Roman Mothershed for a 41-yard touchdown. LSU led 27–24 with 9:42 left. The Tigers had fooled Kentucky beautifully. Now they had to finish it.

Harris ended the night with a touchdown caught and another thrown. Dilin Jones supplied 140 yards rushing and receiving, including seven catches for 84. Leavitt threw for 275 yards and two scores, then ran for another in overtime. There was enough offense here to win an SEC road game. There were also two second-half turnovers that kept dragging Baker’s defense back onto the field to clean up.

On LSU’s first offensive snap after halftime, Leavitt threw an interception that gave Kentucky the ball at the Tigers’ 36. Baker’s defense held, with Deuce Geralds breaking up the fourth-down pass. Later, Malik Blocton sacked Minchey on third down, and Zouagui missed from 42 yards. LSU had the lead and the ball with less than five minutes left. Two offensive snaps later, Jamarrion Harkless sacked Leavitt, the ball came loose, and Tavion Gadson recovered at the LSU 13.

The defense held again. Keys broke up a second-down throw toward Henry Boyer. Minchey’s next pass fell incomplete. Zouagui missed from 26. Two turnovers, two short fields, no Kentucky points. With 3:11 left, LSU still led by three and had another chance to take the game by the throat. The Tigers moved the chains once, reached the two-minute timeout, then came up that one yard short.

Overtime offered another chance. Leavitt completed a 10-yard pass to Harris, then followed his blocking downhill for a 15-yard touchdown run. Scott Starzyk’s extra point made it 34–27. Kentucky threw incomplete on first down and got two yards from Baxter on second. Third-and-eight from the LSU 23. Sloan’s offense needed a play against a defense that had spent the second half making him work for every scoring opportunity.

Minchey found Darby, the freshman from Bossier City who once committed to LSU. Darby gathered the difficult throw across his body and slid toward the goal line, gaining 22 yards to the Tigers’ 1. Kentucky went big: eight offensive linemen, three tight ends. Rodriguez took the direct snap, and Keys stopped him for no gain. Baxter scored on the next play. Stein signaled for two.

Kiffin knew he would. After LSU scored, he warned Baker to have his best two-point defense ready if Kentucky answered, “just like they did the week before.” At South Carolina, the Wildcats erased a 17-point deficit for the largest road comeback in program history, then went for the win. LSU knew Stein’s inclination. It still had to stop his offense.

Kentucky showed the heavy package again, drawing a Kiffin timeout. Then came the disputed movement: Max Anderson appeared to move before Stein called timeout, and Kiffin wanted a false-start penalty. None was enforced. Kentucky reset, brought Minchey back at quarterback and spread the formation. LSU’s defenders followed the motion outside. Its defensive tackles worked outward. Nobody filled the middle.

Minchey kept the ball and ran through the hole. Three yards, two points, ball game.

Sloan and Baker spent years together at Louisiana Tech and LSU, learning each other’s habits on the same practice field. Saturday night, Baker kept Kentucky out of the end zone throughout the second half of regulation. Sloan’s offense still found the tying drive, the third-and-eight completion and the final opening. Baker won enough of the night to give LSU a chance. Sloan won the ending.

Stein watched Kentucky beat LSU in triple overtime in 2007 as a fan, then joined the celebration on the field. Nineteen years later, he was the coach going for two and giving the Wildcats another LSU victory to celebrate. The Tigers haven’t won in Lexington since the Bluegrass Miracle in 2002. Their larger road problem has reached eight consecutive SEC defeats away from Tiger Stadium since beating Arkansas on October 19, 2024. Kiffin inherited six. He owns the last two.

“This goes on all of us,” Kiffin said. He also acknowledged “so many opportunities to close the game out and finish it.” There were enough to haunt the film room: the missed tackles, the turnovers, the ball returned to the offense with the lead, the yard left on fourth down, Darby’s catch on third-and-eight. LSU kept Kentucky alive until Sloan’s offense found the three yards that buried it. Six games remain. The Tigers have no more losses to spare.