Kentucky fans stormed the field at Kroger Field after an overtime win over LSU.

The Wildcats had every opportunity to let a big game slip away. Instead, they beat No. 10 LSU in overtime, giving their first-year coach another signature victory and Kentucky fans another reason to believe.

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WDRB+WAVE) — Somebody ought to put out an all-points bulletin for the old Kentucky football team.

It has disappeared.

You remember the one. It could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It could turn a missed assignment into a lost Saturday. It could take a perfectly good football game and make you wish you’d spent the afternoon cleaning the garage.

That team had several excellent opportunities to make an appearance Saturday night.

Kentucky missed two field goals. It squandered a fumble recovery deep in LSU territory. It let the nation’s No. 10 team hang around long enough to take the lead in overtime.

And then the Wildcats did something thoroughly un-Kentucky-like.

They won.

Kentucky 35, LSU 34.

It’s fair to say The Stein Era is off to a decent start.

Will Stein is 36 years old. He has been Kentucky’s head football coach for six games. At an age when some coaches are still trying to get onto the right committee, Stein has beaten two top-10 teams and won three consecutive Southeastern Conference games.

Four weeks ago, Kentucky went to Texas A&M and won. Last week, the Wildcats overcame a 17-point deficit at South Carolina and won in overtime. Saturday, they beat LSU in a game they could have won in regulation, nearly lost in overtime and finally settled with a two-point conversion that was almost embarrassingly easy.

Las Vegas figured Kentucky would win four and a half games this season. Stein has already won five, with six to play. That’s what we call fast cash.

The final play Saturday was a small masterpiece of recognition.

LSU had scored first in overtime on a 15-yard run by Sam Leavitt. Kentucky answered with a 1-yard touchdown by CJ Baxter.

That made it LSU 34, Kentucky 33.

A conventional coach, at home, would have kicked the extra point and prepared for another overtime. Stein, who had won the South Carolina game by going for two, saw no reason to change a successful arrangement.

Kentucky lined up, tried to draw LSU offside and called timeout.

There was time to reconsider. Time to imagine the consequences of failure. Time to think about what the podcasts would say if the play didn’t work.

Stein sent his offense back out.

Five receivers. Empty backfield. Kenny Minchey alone waiting for the snap.

LSU spread its defense to cover the receivers. Minchey saw a light box, that is, just four four defenders between the tackles in position to stop the run, and checked to a quarterback draw.

He took the snap, looked up the middle and found nobody there.

He ran. He trotted. He practically danced. Three yards, untouched. He could have carried a cup of coffee through that opening without spilling it.

Stein missed the whole thing.

“I didn’t see what happened,” he said. “I was watching the routes, then people started storming the field.”

The coach had decided to go for the win. His quarterback had figured out how to get it.

And with that, Kentucky had its second consecutive 35-34 overtime victory, both decided by a two-point conversion. It’s the first team with one-point OT wins in consecutive weeks since the college overtime format was instituted.

“This was a little more chaotic than last week,” Stein said.

But there was considerably more to Saturday than the last three yards. For most of the evening, Kentucky did things against LSU’s defense that teams weren’t supposed to do.

The Tigers arrived ranked second nationally in total defense and fourth against the run, allowing just 58.4 rushing yards per game.

Baxter busted through that total on Kentucky’s first play, breaking free for 77 yards before he was caught at the LSU 3. He carried it in on the next snap. Two plays, 80 yards, touchdown.

It was not an encouraging introduction for the LSU defense.

Brock Coffman later returned a punt 55 yards for a touchdown. And just before halftime, Minchey led Kentucky on a 15-play, 75-yard drive, finishing it himself on the final play of the half by fighting through a pile of LSU defenders from a yard out.

There was no trick to that touchdown. No open field. No clever formation that fooled anybody. Just a quarterback determined to get one more yard than the defense intended to allow.

Kentucky led 21-17 at halftime.

Kentucky quarterback Kenny Minchey fights into the end zone for a touchdown on the final play of the first half in Kentucky's win over LSU.

And for much of the second half, the Wildcats seemed determined to find out how many opportunities a team could waste and still win a football game.

They led 24-20 before LSU receiver Jackson Harris threw a 41-yard touchdown pass to Roman Mothershed on a trick play to put the Tigers ahead 27-24.

Kentucky drove back into scoring position, but Adam Zouagui missed a 42-yard field goal.

Then Jamarrion Harkless sacked Leavitt and forced a fumble that Tavion Gadson recovered at the LSU 13.

Here was Kentucky’s chance to put the old story away. Instead, the Wildcats reached the 8, misfired on third down and sent Zouagui out for a 26-yard attempt.

He missed that one, too.

The old Kentucky football team seemed to be warming up on the sideline.

There was enough time left for LSU to finish the job. The Tigers couldn’t. Kentucky got the ball back, and Minchey went to work again.

This has become something of a specialty for him. He is not a quarterback who seems terribly impressed by the circumstances. He can throw a bad pass, take a sack, watch a lead disappear and return to the huddle looking as though someone has merely interrupted his evening.

He completed five of his last six passes in regulation and got Kentucky into field-goal range again.

With 12 seconds remaining, Zouagui lined up for a 33-yard field goal.

This time, he made it.

“Life of a kicker,” Stein said.

The same kicker who had missed twice had saved the game. There were no villains here. Kentucky had made plenty of mistakes as a team. Its offense had failed to finish drives. Its kicker had missed opportunities. Its defense had surrendered big plays. The remarkable thing was that none of it proved fatal.

LSU had been given every chance to leave Lexington with a victory. Instead, the Tigers found themselves in overtime against a Kentucky team that had no intention of leaving.

Leavitt scored. Baxter scored. Stein went for two. Minchey found an empty middle.

And suddenly, the field was covered with people in blue.

There is something worth examining in the last four weeks of Kentucky football, beyond the scores.

Minchey has beaten No. 9 Texas A&M on the road, engineered the largest road comeback in school history at South Carolina and now helped knock off No. 10 LSU. He has written himself into Kentucky football history on consecutive Saturdays.

Some players spend four years hoping for one of those moments. Minchey has been collecting them like frequent-flier miles.

And Stein has changed the conversation around Kentucky football.

There will be comparisons to Curt Cignetti at Indiana. There should be. Cignetti arrived at a school accustomed to losing football games and behaved as though its history had nothing to do with his future. Eventually, Indiana won a national championship.

Stein is nowhere near that accomplishment. Six games do not make a dynasty. Kentucky has a long way to go.

But the attitude is familiar. Stein does not seem especially interested in what Kentucky has traditionally been unable to do.

He is more interested in what it can do next. And his players are beginning to think the same way.

That is not to suggest Kentucky has solved everything. Saturday’s missed opportunities were real. Against another opponent, on another night, they might have been decisive.

But that is precisely what makes this victory so revealing. Kentucky didn’t win because everything went right. It won when plenty went wrong.

The old Kentucky football team might have folded after the second missed field goal. It might have regarded LSU’s overtime touchdown as the final insult in a familiar story.

This Kentucky team answered with a touchdown of its own and then went looking for two more points.

For Stein, the celebration meant more than another entry in the standings.

“This was for Big Blue Nation. For the state of Kentucky,” he said. “This is for everybody that grew up just like me, a Wildcat fan, and really excited for those people.”

From high above Kroger Field, the view afterward was extraordinary. Thousands of fans covered the turf. The stands were emptying, but the field was filling.

For this game, Stein had brought back the old Power K, a piece of Kentucky football’s past.

And for much of Saturday night, the Wildcats threatened to bring back something else from that past: the missed opportunities, the heartbreak, the game that got away.

But not this time.

The old Power K came back. The old Kentucky ending didn’t.

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CRAWFORD | The old Kentucky football team went missing. Will Stein and the Wildcats beat LSU, 35-34 in OT