Five things you need to know from Kentucky’s 35-13 loss at South Carolina
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Gameday: South Carolina 35, Kentucky 13
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-South Carolina football game at Williams-Brice Stadium in Columbia, S.C.
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Five things you need to know from Kentucky football’s 35-13 loss at South Carolina:
1. Cutter Boley’s first road start. The redshirt freshman quarterback from Lexington Christian Academy made his third career start for Kentucky on Saturday night — and his first outside the friendly confines of Kroger Field.
It did not go great.
Boosted by a strong Kentucky running game, Boley was solid in the first quarter. He finished the first quarter 3-for-6 passing for 73 yards, and UK led 10-7.
The second quarter was a disaster for the young quarterback.
On a third-and-7 from the South Carolina 46, Boley was sacked by Gamecocks star Dylan Stewart.
The ball came out, and Jatius Geer scooped and scored from 41 yards out.
Two UK offensive plays from scrimmage later, a Boley pass in the middle skipped off the hand of Kentucky wideout Kendrick Law.
South Carolina’s Gerald Kilgore hauled in the deflection and scooted 45 yards for another TD and a 21-10 Gamecocks advantage.
Later in the second quarter, Boley was under pressure on a third-and-12 from the UK 13. The QB got the ball out, but it was a moonball.
South Carolina cornerback Brandon Cisse picked this one at the UK 43, and it set up a 6-yard touchdown run for Rahsul Faison.
Boley finished the game 10 of 19 passing for 124 yards with two interceptions and the costly fumble.
For what it’s worth, this is how some notable past Kentucky quarterbacks fared in their first road starts as Wildcats:
• Tim Couch. Thrown as a true freshman into a pit of Gators on the road against No. 1 Florida by Bill Curry and offensive coordinator Elliot Uzelac, the former Leslie County star completed 6 of 18 passes for 13 yards with an interception Sept. 28, 1996, in a 65-0 Kentucky loss.
• Jared Lorenzen. As a redshirt freshman, the ex-Fort Thomas Highlands star completed 22 of 34 passes for 367 yards and three touchdowns and three interceptions in a 40-34 overtime loss Sept. 2, 2000, at Louisville.
• Andre Woodson. An injury to starting QB Shane Boyd allowed the former North Hardin star to make his first college start Oct. 23, 2004, at Auburn. In a 42-10 loss, Woodson completed 14 of 26 passes for 73 yards with no touchdowns or interceptions thrown.
• Will Levis. As a redshirt junior in his first season after transferring to UK from Penn State, Levis started his first road game as a Cat on Sept. 25, 2021, at South Carolina. In a 16-10 Kentucky victory, Levis completed 15 of 22 passes for 102 yards with no touchdowns and one interception.
As you will note, some of the best QBs to play at Kentucky achieved that status after some pretty meager performances in their initial starts away from home.
2. A pivotal loss for Mark Stoops. In the preseason, the general consensus was that — given the difficulties of Kentucky’s October schedule — the Wildcats had to get to three wins in September to have a viable chance at bowl eligibility in 2025.
With the loss at South Carolina, you will note UK will enter October 2-2.
Looking ahead, UK still has games remaining at No. 5 Georgia, with No. 10 Texas and No. 15 Tennessee and at No. 18 Vanderbilt.
Also remaining are a home game with Florida and road games at Auburn and at Louisville along with a home date against (a good) FCS foe, Tennessee Tech.
The losses this month to Mississippi and South Carolina do not guarantee that Kentucky won’t make the postseason. But with the strength of the Wildcats’ remaining schedule, getting to bowl eligibility will now be a daunting task.
3. Beamer owns the Cats. When South Carolina hired Shane Beamer after the 2020 season, the Gamecocks had lost in six of their previous seven meetings against Kentucky.
After Saturday night’s game, Beamer is now 4-1 against UK.
As was announced this past week, South Carolina is one of three SEC teams — Florida and Tennessee are the others — that Kentucky will continue to play annually when the Southeastern Conference moves to nine league games a season in 2026.
Moving forward, how UK fares against its annual league foes will be crucial in setting the overall arc of the Wildcats football program.
That makes the failure to wrest the momentum away from South Carolina on Saturday night costly.
4. A perennial nemesis does in the Cats again. Since Shane Beamer hired Clayton White away from Western Kentucky to run the South Carolina defense, UK offenses have been consistently stifled by the Gamecocks “D.”
In four prior meetings against White-coordinated South Carolina defenses, Kentucky had never scored more than 16 points. Over the previous three meetings, the Gamecocks held UK under 300 yards total offense.
On Saturday night, it was more of the same. White’s defense in the first half sacked Cutter Boley four times, harried Kentucky into four turnovers and either scored or set up three of the Gamecocks’ four first-half touchdowns.
Last year, in South Carolina’s 31-6 win in Lexington, the Gamecocks had five sacks and 11 tackles for loss.
This year, the count was six sacks and 10 TFL for Carolina.
UK finished with 13 points and 232 total yards.
5. More post-bye week blues for UK. Kentucky’s loss at South Carolina was UK’s sixth defeat in its past eight games that immediately followed a bye week.
Under Mark Stoops, the Cats are now 6-11 overall in regular-season games that immediately follow an open Saturday.
With Kentucky’s loss to South Carolina, the Wildcats are now 3-16 in their past 19 games against power conference opposition dating back to the middle of the 2023 season.
Since the start of 2023, UK is now 9-22 against teams from power conferences.
After going 5-3 in SEC contests in 2021, the Wildcats have gone 7-19 in league games since.
Fashion police
For its initial road game of 2025, Kentucky wore white helmets, white jerseys with blue letters and numbers and white pants.
Since 2020, UK is now 5-6 in all-white.
This story was originally published September 27, 2025 at 11:08 PM.
