Everything Mark Stoops needed to happen in 2025? It is not happening
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kentucky missed key early wins, dimming 2025 bowl eligibility hopes.
- UK is 3-16 in its last 19 games vs. power-conference teams under Mark Stoops.
- Offensive woes continued under Bush Hamdan, raising scrutiny of Stoops' decisions.
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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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Mark Stoops really needed Kentucky to win three games in September for the 2025 Wildcats to have a viable shot at bowl eligibility.
That has not happened.
After three seasons in which Stoops’ team has played far too much mistake-laden football, the UK coach really needed his team to start this year clean and mean.
In Kentucky’s two SEC contests to date, that has not happened.
To gin up some hope in a dispirited fan base, Stoops really needs homegrown quarterback Cutter Boley to emerge as a bridge to a better future.
That can very much can still happen, but on a dispiriting night at Williams-Brice Stadium, it did not.
Mostly, what Stoops needs to happen are wins against power conference teams.
There have only been two tries at that so far in 2025, but they have both been losses.
Simply put, the things Mark Stoops needs to happen in 2025 are not happening.
Kentucky fell against South Carolina 35-13 on a sultry Saturday night before an announced crowd of 79,266 at Williams-Brice Stadium.
If you are keeping score at home, the Wildcats are now 3-16 in their past 19 games against power conference opposition.
Stoops and the Cats have now dropped four straight to Shane Beamer and South Carolina — who will be staying on the UK schedule in future seasons, you may have heard, as one of the Cats’ three annual SEC foes.
This time, Kentucky was done in by a second quarter meltdown which saw the Cats turn the ball over four times. South Carolina defenders took two of those miscues in for touchdowns, and a third set up a Gamecocks TD.
“We did things in this game we knew we couldn’t do,” Stoops said afterward. “… We knew we couldn’t give up defensive touchdowns — we gave up two.”
With UK coming off a 4-8 slog in 2024 and an increasingly restive fan base yearning for change, the list of things Stoops needed to hit on is myriad.
Kentucky needed to beat either Mississippi or South Carolina during September to get to three wins. Having done neither, UK will enter the October gauntlet of at No. 5 Georgia, No. 10 Texas and No. 15 Tennessee at 2-2, 0-2 SEC.
UK still has eight games left in 2025, but without a “W” over either Ole Miss or South Carolina, it’s hard to come up with a realistic path to six wins and postseason eligibility for Kentucky.
After the past three Kentucky seasons were undermined to varying degrees by undisciplined football, Stoops badly needed to put a team on the field this year that does not beat itself.
Instead, with the chaos UK had getting offensive plays in ahead to beat the play clock in the first half against Mississippi and the second quarter disaster against South Carolina, it has been the opposite so far in the important games.
It’s not fair in the big picture to put this much expectation on Boley, but Stoops needs the 6-foot-5, 220-pound pocket passer to become a player who inspires hope now for a better Kentucky future.
On Saturday night, in his first college road start, that did not happen. Over the course of three plays in UK’s disastrous second quarter, Boley lost a strip-sack fumble that turned into a South Carolina touchdown and then threw a pick six. Later in the period, another Boley pick also set up a South Carolina TD.
“Cutter is a very good quarterback that’s going to have a very bright future,” Stoops said. “When you start on the road for the first time in the SEC you’re going to … take some lumps.”
After Kentucky struggled mightily on offense in 2024, one other thing Stoops needed was for his continuity bet on offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan to pay off this season. In a program that had employed a different coordinator every season from 2020 through 2024, that seemed sensible.
Alas, Hamdan has called the offense for UK in 11 games against power conference teams. Kentucky has never scored more than 23 points or gained more than 354 total yards in any of those games.
On Saturday night, Clayton White’s South Carolina defense actually outscored the UK offense 14-13.
Many in a restless Big Blue Nation are past waiting on Stoops to right the Kentucky football ship.
My firsthand memory of UK football goes back to the season the venue then known as Commonwealth Stadium opened. In that time, Stoops has been the best Kentucky coach.
In the emerging era of revenue sharing with college athletes, buying out a coach’s contract for in excess of $35 million — which would be the cost of UK parting with Stoops after this season — is not an efficient use of resources.
But college athletics run on hope. That’s what puts fans in the stands and, more importantly, good recruits on rosters.
If some of the things Mark Stoops needs to happen don’t start happening — and soon — the University of Kentucky is going to find itself in a really difficult spot.
