Five things you need to know from Kentucky football’s 31-14 loss to No. 3 Texas
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Game day: No. 3 Texas 31, Kentucky 14
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Texas football game at Austin, Texas.
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Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 31-14 loss to No. 3 Texas on Saturday in Austin:
1. Bowl streak dies at eight. Kentucky’s loss drops the Wildcats to 4-7 overall and 1-7 in the SEC. That means that, no matter how UK fares next week against intrastate-rival Louisville, the Wildcats cannot get to the six-win threshold necessary for bowl eligibility.
That will kill the Cats’ bowl streak at eight straight seasons. The last year in which Kentucky did not earn a postseason berth was 2015.
2. Kentucky’s offensive futility. Kentucky ended its 2024 SEC schedule with a dubious distinction: The Wildcats never scored more than 20 points against a Southeastern Conference opponent this season.
The last time UK went its entire SEC schedule without ever scoring 21 points in a league game was 1982.
That team, Jerry Claiborne’s first Kentucky squad, never scored more than 14 points in SEC play while finishing 0-10-1 overall, 0-6 in the SEC).
On Saturday, Kentucky went with veteran Brock Vandagriff as its starting QB. The Georgia transfer played the entire first half and completed 3 of 7 passes for 51 yards with a touchdown pass and an interception.
In half two, UK played true freshman Cutter Boley. The former Lexington Christian Academy star gave a good account of himself, completing 10 of 18 passes for 160 yards and an interception thrown on a third-and-32 play with 39 seconds left in the game.
It will be interesting to see if Kentucky starts Boley at quarterback in the Governor’s Cup rivalry battle with Louisville that will be the final game of the Wildcats’ 2024 season.
3. UK struggling against power conference foes. With the loss at Texas, Kentucky is now 3-13 in its last 16 games versus its peers from college football’s power leagues.
4. Worst SEC record since Stoops’ first year. With its defeat, Kentucky wraps up SEC play for 2024 with a 1-7 mark.
It is the worst record in league play for Kentucky since the 2013 Wildcats, Mark Stoops’ first team as UK head coach, went 0-8 in Southeastern Conference games.
5. Kentucky vs. the Lone Star State. With its loss to Texas, Kentucky is now 9-9 all-time against schools from the Lone Star State.
UK is 3-0 vs. North Texas; 2-2 vs. Baylor; 1-0 vs. TCU, UTEP and Texas State; 1-2 against Texas A&M; 0-1 vs. SMU; and 0-2 against both Houston and Texas.
Fashion police
For its final road game of 2024, Kentucky wore white helmets, white jerseys with blue letters and numbers and white pants.
Since the start of the 2020 season, UK is now 5-5 in its “icy whites.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2024 at 7:11 PM.
