UK football’s undefeated, but ‘you guys still haven’t seen our best yet.’

There was a muted celebration in Kentucky’s locker room.

Yes, it was lovely to be unbeaten and 5-0 after knocking off South Carolina 24-10 on Saturday night in front of a sellout crowd at Kroger Field.

Yes, it was nice to top the Gamecocks for a fifth straight time and to exit September one win away from bowl eligibility.

But despite all of those things, the Cats weren’t in a dancing, cheering mood.

“It did feel a little different in there,” Coach Mark Stoops said of UK not following up 5-0 and 3-0 in Southeastern Conference play with a boisterous locker room. “Because they, we truly expect to do that. And, honestly, I think we all feel a little like we left a lot out there.”

It wasn’t the second half the Kentucky offense wanted necessarily, but the second quarter ultimately was enough as the Cats scored 21 straight points on touchdowns runs from Terry Wilson, A.J. Rose and Benny Snell.

That trio combined to give UK a 24-3 lead at the half that the Cats would never relinquish. They later helped UK win the yardage battle 327-321 over the Gamecocks, including 195 yards on the ground.

But there was still more that could have been done.

“We definitely didn’t finish the way I’d like,” said Snell, who had 99 yards and a 4-yard touchdown run en route to becoming just the third UK player in school history to rush for 3,000 or more yards. “We could’ve finished way stronger than that.”

There were many unforced errors, pre-snap penalties, other issues that kept Kentucky from feeling too good about itself despite being 5-0 for just the first time since 2007 and just the fifth time since World War II.

“We’ve got to make sure we stay disciplined; the penalties have killed us,” offensive coordinator Eddie Gran said of UK’s 11 flags for 115 yards. “We got ourselves out of scoring position twice. We’ve got a lot to learn there. We’ve got to be better.”

Gran would like to see Kentucky get better on third down after starting the game 3-for-5 on that down and ending it 3-for-11.

“We’ll find some good things out of this, but we’ve got to be able to finish,” Gran said. “We’ve got to be better for four quarters.”

South Carolina (2-2, 1-2 SEC) was able to keep things interesting in the second half, scoring on a 58-yard touchdown pass from Jake Bentley to Deebo Samuel midway through the third quarter. Bentley finished the day completing 13 of his 28 pass attempts for 148 yards, but 58 yards of that were on the score. No individual Gamecocks rusher had more than 44 yards in the loss.

A few times the Gamecocks looked ready to make sure the 63,081 fans at Kroger Field left with shorter fingernails and grayer hair, but the UK defense did its part.

The Cats picked off Bentley three times, including a key interception by Mike Edwards in the end zone. Derrick Baity and Darius West also snatched Bentley balls out of the air. West led the UK defense with nine tackles and two pass breakups.

Josh Allen continued to terrorize opposing quarterbacks, this time getting eight tackles, including four for a loss and three sacks. The senior linebacker also had a forced fumble and a quarterback hurry.

“You get him in predictable pass (situations) and he’s very hard to block,” Stoops said of Allen, who along with his defensive teammates held South Carolina to 193 yards through the air.

The Gamecocks came into the game averaging 476 yards per game, including some 279 passing yards.

“We turned the ball over four times, we had 11 penalties as a team, the field position in the second half really hurt us,” South Carolina’s Will Muschamp said. “I give Kentucky credit, they’ve got a good football team, we’ve said it all week. We self-inflicted a lot of issues to ourselves and you give Kentucky credit.”

The Cats didn’t seem all that interested in taking credit despite being unbeaten heading into a tough road test at Texas A&M on Saturday.

Kentucky had a chance to put the game away much sooner than it did, Stoops lamented. Those things can’t happen on the road in the league.

“We could have finished that a little better and we shot ourselves in the foot and got a little reckless with some penalties and just a little bit of sloppy play,” the coach said.

Still, UK opened the season with five straight wins by at least 11 points for the first time since 1950, and the Cats now have three double-digit SEC wins in the same season for the first time since 2002.

There’s plenty more to do and see.

And celebrate, the players promised.

“We’re not playing our best and you guys still haven’t seen our best yet,” promised senior linebacker Jordan Jones, who had five tackles as well as a forced fumble and recovery.

“You guys have seen some good parts of us, but there’s still a lot of things we’re going to go over on film and get cleaned up and we’ll get even better.”

This story was originally published September 30, 2018 at 2:03 AM.