South Carolina is Preparing for a Slugfest against Kentucky

Longtime Kentucky fans probably never considered South Carolina a rival. That has changed in the Mark Stoops era.

This series has included some of Stoops’ biggest wins. It was where he won his first road game and secured his first signature win, a comeback capped off by a Bud Dupree pick-six. It’s almost featured plenty of heartbreak. The shocking loss at Williams-Brice Stadium in 2023 left Stoops disheveled under the stadium after the game.

“Overall, South Carolina has always been a good matchup,” Stoops said on Monday. “They’ve always played very aggressive, extremely impressive up front, in particular.”

That defensive front accounted for five sacks and 11 tackles for loss last fall at Kroger Field. An important game in the second week of the season, the Cats let go of the rope and fell 31-6.

“That game last year was 10-6 midway through the third quarter. People forget that. That’s always a slugfest,” Beamer recalled on Tuesday.

“Going back, take Covid out of it, from 2016 on, the winning team has never scored more than 24 offensive points. We scored 31 last year, but the offense scored 24 because Nick (Emmanwori) had the interception…. I hope we score more than 24 on Saturday night. That would be awesome but it’s going to be a slugfest and we’ve gotta be really, really physical and be ready to compete against a really good Kentucky team on Saturday night.”

To correct the South Carolina head coach, that actually dates back to 2015. Kentucky led 24-22 when Denzil Ware recovered a fumble on a two-point conversion and took it to the house to create a final score of 26-22.

These programs are not so different from one another. These are typically low-scoring, close games that must be won within razor-thin margins. Beamer knows a big challenge lies ahead as South Carolina tries to avoid a three-game losing streak to open SEC play.

“Have and always have had a lot of respect for Coach Stoops, what he’s done at the University of Kentucky. Winning is hard. There’s no question about it, and the level of success he’s had since he took over in Lexington is just so impressive. It’s a model of consistency, year in and year out,” said Beamer.

“They’re a team — they have their systems. It doesn’t change. You have to go beat them. They’re extremely well-coached, they got really good players. I know last season did not go the way they wanted record-wise, but you can see they corrected whatever issues they had from last season. They’ve got a really impressive group right now, offense, defense, and special teams. Some players that are a year older in their program, impact transfers that they’ve brought in on all three phases, so we’ve got a big challenge.”