Kentucky hung in for a while at Georgia on a rainy night with sloppy conditions, but Georgia pulled away in the end for a 21-0 victory in a game that was 0-0 at halftime.

“Difficult loss, tough environment for us here today,” Stoops said. “The weather was a big factor, it was a very good football game. It came down to several plays, probably, that really made a difference. Give them credit. D’Andre Swift is an impressive player. Just gave him a congratulations after the game and wished him goodbye. He needs to go to the NFL. He is an elite player.”

Lynn Bowden was 2-for-15 passing for 17 yards, but had 17 carries for 99 yards as Kentucky struggled to move the ball much of the game.

“I’m proud of our guys, I thought we fought all night,” Stoops said. “Again, in a tough situation, we knew Georgia was going to respond and play like they did. I was proud of our guys. I promise you, they left it all on the field, played extremely hard. They made some critical plays, we made a few mistakes and that’s the difference in the game. You can boil it down to probably three or four plays that make a big difference.”

Stoops was asked about inserting Sawyer Smith in the game as Kentucky didn’t complete a pass until late.

“It’s tough for me to continue answering questions about this with y’all, you know what I mean,” Stoops said. “I’m not trying to withhold information, you know me. I’m very up front and try to be as honest as I can. He’s close. It’s tough on a cold, rainy, miserable night to put him in when he’s just barely getting close to being ready to play. He would go, you saw him play in the South Carolina game. He would go if his arm was falling off. I can’t do that to him again. It was a tough night, we knew it was going to be a tough grind, so we did what we did. We gave ourselves the best option we felt like we had at that point.”