CJ Baxter helped Kentucky Football make history, then gave all the credit to the Big Blue Wall

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CJ Baxter just had the best afternoon of his Kentucky career, and he wanted to talk about everybody but himself.

Baxter carried the ball 16 times for 149 yards and a touchdown in Kentucky’s 45-21 win over South Alabama on Saturday at Kroger Field. That’s more than nine yards every time he touched it. He opened the scoring, ripped off a 53-yard run, and helped Kentucky pile up 390 rushing yards, a season high.

When he stepped to the podium afterward, though, the first thing he did was deflect.

“Y’all could’ve ran through those holes,” Baxter told us.

He was smiling when he said it, but he meant it. Baxter spent a good chunk of his time with the media praising the offensive line by name, from Lance Heard on down, and talking about how tight that group is off the field. He said if we could see how they work during the week, we’d understand why Saturday looked the way it did.

You can watch the full exchange here:

Baxter wasn’t the only one eating. Jason Patterson went for 137 yards and three touchdowns on 12 carries, including a 75-yard sprint that tied the game at 21 with 1:22 left before halftime. Jovantae Barnes finally broke through with 100 yards and his first touchdown as a Wildcat on just eight carries.

It’s the first time Kentucky has had three 100-yard rushers in a game since October 2020 against Ole Miss, and back then one of the three was quarterback Terry Wilson. Per UK Athletics, this is the first time in program history three actual running backs all cleared 100.

And every one of them said the same thing afterward. It was the line.

I’ve been around a lot of postgame pressers, and you learn to tell the difference between a guy giving the O-line credit because he’s supposed to and a guy who genuinely believes it. Baxter believes it. You could hear it in how specific he got, naming guys and talking about what happens Tuesday and Wednesday, not just Saturday.

That matters for this team. Kentucky wasn’t sharp Saturday. Will Stein said as much. South Alabama led 21-14 in the second quarter, and the Cats looked like a team still coming down from the Texas A&M upset.

What flipped it was the run game wearing down a Jaguar defense that just couldn’t match the depth up front. South Alabama came in second nationally in time of possession and left 4/15 on third down.

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