South Carolina Football Way-Too-Early Schedule Preview: Kentucky Wildcats
By Kevin Miller
In the eleventh game on the 2023 football schedule, South Carolina football will take on Kentucky, looking for their first winning streak over the Wildcats since winning three in a row from 2011-2013.
In 2022, the Gamecocks beat their Blue Grass State opponents in a not-that-close 24-14 whoopin’ while UK was without starting quarterback Will Levis.
After the game, Shane Beamer engaged in some coach-on-coach violence against Kentucky headman Mark Stoops in direct response to disparaging comments from Stoops about “dancing around in sunglasses.” In the visiting locker room, Beamer donned a pair of sunglasses and “danced around” after sharing with his team about his displeasure with Stoops’ comments.
Last year’s light war of words and the unnaturally blue-leaning tilt to the SEC East rivalry this decade has seen South Carolina vs. Kentucky turn into an emotional matchup for the two squads. Adding to the intrigue around the 2023 matchup is the fact that both programs now view themselves (along with Tennessee) as real challengers to Georgia in the East.
For the South Carolina football program, challenging Georgia must include beating the Wildcats at home in the penultimate game of the regular season. The key to beating Kentucky will be, as it usually is, stopping their rushing attack.
Under Mark Stoops’ leadership in Lexington, Kentucky has thrived as a run-first team, but many fans wondered if that could continue into 2023 after the Wildcats lost their two top rushers in Chris Rodriguez (NFL) and Kavosiey Smoak (transferred to Colorado).
Stoops quieted the doubters by bringing in two highly-touted transfers in Re’Mahn Davis (Vanderbilt) and Demie Sumo-Karngbaye (NC State). Davis ran all over the Gamecock defense in 2022 as a member of the Vanderbilt Commodores, and Sumo-Karngbaye was a transfer back that Carolina was hoping to land through the portal.
Offensive coordinator Liam Coen is back for his second stint in Lexington after spending a season in the NFL with the Los Angeles Rams. The offense wasn’t always great for the Wildcats in Coen’s first stretch with the team (held to 20 or fewer points 5 times in 2021), but the team won 10 games for just the third time in program history.
Gamecock defensive coordinator Clayton White will need to get the better of Coen just as he bested Rich Scangarello in the 2022 matchup. New Wildcat transfer quarterback Devin Leary brings lots of experience over from his time at NC State, but he missed significant time with injuries in 2022 after a stellar 2021.
South Carolina’s ability to play a competent defense in 2023 could be the deciding factor in this game. The Gamecocks are replacing six or seven starters from last year’s defense depending on how one looks at things, and they will have ten games before the Kentucky matchup to figure things out on that side of the football.
During Kentucky’s recent run of success over Carolina, the Gamecock offense has typically been able to move the football but has struggled to score. Turnovers, inopportune drops, and inconsistent quarterback play have kept South Carolina from scoring enough against the Wildcats as the Gamecocks have scored 24 or fewer points in each matchup since 2014.
New offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains will look to reverse that trend in 2023 behind the arm of Spencer Rattler. Rattler and top target Juice Wells are expected to be among the SEC’s best pass-and-catch combinations this fall, and with the question marks surrounding the Gamecock run game, they will need to be for South Carolina to improve again in 2023.
Barring the unexpected, the Gamecocks should be slight favorites to beat the Wildcats at home in the eleventh game on each team’s schedule. However, since there are 93 days until week 1 of the college football season, there is a lot of football to play between now and then. No matter what, though, beating Kentucky has to be on the list of goals for the 2023 South Carolina football team.