ATHENS — Lane Kiffin bemoaned Ole Miss’ missed opportunity at Georgia, to the extent of repeating three times over how his team was up two scores before falling 43-35.

The Bulldogs dominated the fourth quarter, allowing the Rebels only 13 yards and one first down on their final 11 plays over three offensive series, leaving Kiffin rambling about what-ifs.

“It’s disappointing to have a shot like this, to be up two scores in the fourth quarter against Georgia, at Georgia and be undefeated to go to 7-0,” said Kiffin, whose team drops to 6-1 overall and 3-1 in SEC play. “That’s kind of a lifetime moment, I told them, and it’s right there if we make one significant play ….

“(Then) we’re sitting here saying what a great job coming in here, and great job by the guys getting up early on them and finishing off Georgia to go 7-0.”

That obviously didn’t happen, leaving Kiffin struggling to put Ole Miss’ inability to stop the Bulldogs’ offense into perspective.

“It was a slow death, 34 (Georgia) first downs, that’s hard to do against a service team,” Kiffin said. “Georgia did a good job today, but that’s not the number one offense in the country.”

But Kiffin was playing against arguably the No. 1 coach in the nation, two-time national champion Kirby Smart, and he knew the Bulldogs would be hard to put down.

“I said it this morning on GameDay, (Kirby) got it from Coach Saban to install belief like, ‘hey we’re going to find a way,’ and when you play Alabama before, or now Georgia, these two coaches, I feel like you have to win the game,” Kiffin said.

“They’re not going to lose it at the end in the fourth quarter. You have to win the game, that’s why we were aggressive.”

The Rebels were confident, too, with Kiffin telling them before the game to be prepared to have success.

“I told them expect to score on this defense, expect to make big plays, we have a really good game plan,” Kiffin said. “When you score just come back over and get ready to do it again, because we’re going to need a lot of it, and we did for five series.”

But then the Ole Miss scoring stopped after it took a 35-26 into the fourth quarter, while Georgia’s offense continued to roll, totaling 510 yards with 289 through the air, and another 221 on the ground.

“I thought Gunner (Stockton) did a great job keeping plays alive and made a lot of plays with his legs,” Kiffin said. “It really wasn’t one thing, they did everything there, and we did limit explosive plays — there weren’t a ton of explosive plays.”

The Bulldogs had three plays that went for more than 25 yards: Stockton’s 36-yard pass to Colbie Young on the opening drive, a 26-yard pass to Zachariah Branch in the third quarter and a 36-yard pass to Dillon Bell on UGA’s final scoring drive.

But it was a 2-yard Georgia fourth-down conversion run that Kiffin was struggling to get over after the game.

“If you go back to where we’re ahead, they have the fourth down at midfield (fourth-and-1 at the UGA 44), they run the fullback on a little dive” Kiffin said, referring to Georgia running back Josh McCray picking up two yards and the first down with UGA down 35-26.

“And we’ve got them stopped — what happens at that point? Now, we’re ahead, now there’s some momentum, we finally stop them — but then (McCray) goes through our tackles, and great job by him keeping his feet moving.

“I really felt that point was a really, almost a slow motion moment of like, this is the moment here, we have him, we stop him here, this game is really headed a good direction, and he makes a good play.”

Kiffin’s message to his team in the post-game locker room was sobering.

“I told our guys this is exactly what you could want, you’re in the fourth quarter and you’re up two scores at Georgia, a chance to beat them two years in a row,” Kiffin said. “Unfortunately, we didn’t function on offense after five drives of five touchdowns.”

Kiffin did his best to end his press conference on a positive note, pointing out that Ole Miss has made progress since its prior trip to Athens two seasons ago, when Georgia dominated in a 52-17 win.

“Somebody asked during the week is this a statement game, well, only one team has beat them here in five years,” Kiffin said. “So it’s not like because we lost to Georgia in a one-score game, that we were ahead in by two scores, now all the sudden our program has to be revamped ….

“If you want that feeling, spin back two years ago when we were sitting here and they played like that on both sides of the ball against us, and we had to really change some things in our program.”

Kiffin noted his Ole Miss team doesn’t have much time to stay down; a trip to play Oklahoma next Saturday awaits his Rebels.

“It does feel like the NFL, like here comes another really hard place to play against the top defense in the country,” Kiffin said. “That will be a really big test. We have a lot of things to fix, we have to play better on offense in the fourth quarter, and obviously, defensively.”

As Kiffin noted, Ole Miss was up two scores entering the fourth quarter, only to have the chance for a marquee victory slip away.