Florida is the marker that shows how far Mark Stoops has brought UK football

As the final seconds of Kentucky’s emphatic thumping of No. 22 Florida ticked off the Kroger Field scoreboards Saturday afternoon, Mark Stoops was taken aback.

What had been an electric crowd of 61,699 at the high noon kickoff had fallen sort of silent.

“It was kind of quiet,” Stoops noted later. “(UK fans have) just come to expect this kind of win now.”

Amazingly, to those of us who lived through everyone of Kentucky’s 31 straight football losses to Florida from 1986 through 2017, UK’s besting the Gators in football is becoming an expected occurrence.

Behind a dominating performance from running back Ray Davis and a relentless defensive effort, Kentucky throttled Florida 33-14 Saturday before a sun-drenched crowd at Kroger Field.

To fully gauge just how far Stoops has brought the UK football program, one need only look at the recent tally of the Wildcats against the Gators:

Kentucky (5-0, 2-0 SEC) has now beaten Florida (3-2, 1-1 SEC) three straight and four out of the past six.

Until now, the last time UK had won three straight over UF came when Bear Bryant was the top Cat and Kentucky won four straight over Florida from 1948 through 1951.

“I haven’t thought about that at all,” Stoops said of the big picture of UK’s dramatic turn of fortunes against UF. “This was such a big game for this moment, for this team. I’m just happy for our team.”

Running behind an offensive line that looked more like the vintage “Big Blue Wall” than at anytime in the past two seasons, UK’s Davis came achingly close to setting a new school rushing record.

The graduate transfer from Vanderbilt rolled up 280 yards and three touchdowns on 26 rushes. The 5-foot-10, 216-pound San Francisco product also scored UK’s other touchdown, taking a 9-yard pass from Devin Leary and carrying Florida defenders into the end zone for the game’s first TD.

Only Moe Williams (299 yards vs. South Carolina in 1995) and Lynn Bowden (284 yards vs. Louisville in 2019) have run for more yards in a single game for Kentucky than Davis did Saturday versus Florida.

“It was a great day for me personally, but I really didn’t do much at all,” Davis said. “Got to credit the O-line, tight ends and receiving corps (for their blocking).”

Led by sophomores Maxwell Hairston (10 tackles), Alex Afari (nine) and Keaten Wade (six), the Kentucky defense limited a Florida ground game averaging in excess of 158 yards a game entering the contest to a net of 69 rushing yards.

The Wildcats had nine tackles for loss, sacked Gators quarterback Graham Mertz three times and had the Wisconsin transfer running for his life on multiple other occasions.

“As a defensive unit, we pride ourselves on, ‘You’re not going to get over 100 yards rushing on us,’” UK star defensive tackle Deone Walker said.

As surreal as this would have once sounded, it seems beyond debate at this point that Kentucky has a better college football program than Florida.

Once the series between the Wildcats and Gators was defined by Steve Spurrier taking out his grudge against Bill Curry by hanging 73-7 and 65-0 beatings on the Cats.

For three decades and one year, the UK-UF dynamic was so unbalanced, Kentucky could intercept seven passes in one game (1993); the Wildcats could have one player score three touchdowns of more than 75 yards in The Swamp (1998); and UK could take a 21-3 lead into the fourth quarter on its own field (2003). Yet the Cats lost all of those game to the Gators.

A former assistant at both Miami and Florida State, Stoops came to UK with an emotional edge when it came to playing Florida.

The Kentucky head man endured a couple of agonizing near misses versus the Gators, falling in triple overtime in Gainesville in 2014 and losing at home by one point in 2017 a game when Kentucky, literally, gave Florida two touchdown throws to receivers who were uncovered at the line of scrimmage.

But starting with the Wildcats’ streak-snapping victory in The Swamp in 2018, UK has — for now — taken control of the series with UF.

That reversal of fortune “speaks to everyone in this program and the recruiting and developing that goes on,” Kentucky center Eli Cox said.

As the flagship university in a state of 21.78 million people, Florida has built-in football advantages that UK, the flagship university in a state of 4.509 million people, cannot match.

So the current Kentucky hold over Florida does not figure to last forever.

Nevertheless, in the here and now, UK is better at football than UF.

UK junior linebacker Trevin Wallace is now 3-0 as a Cat against the Gators.

“It feels really good,” a smiling Wallace said.

Walker, Kentucky’s 6-6, 348-pound wide load of a defensive lineman, is now 2-0 against Florida.

“They’re a big-time rival,” Walker said. “I don’t want to lose any game. But if I could pick one game to never lose, it would be Florida. That rivalry is so big in Kentucky.”

That UK players now refer to Florida as a rival — and have taken the edge over the Gators — stands as the ultimate testament to how Stoops has changed Kentucky football.

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