Five things you need to know from Kentucky football’s 24-14 loss to South Carolina

Five things you need to know from No. 13 Kentucky’s 24-14 loss to South Carolina in SEC football at Kroger Field:

1. A damaging loss. In a season when Kentucky (4-2, 1-2 SEC) backers were envisioning the Wildcats facing Georgia with the SEC East lead on the line for a third time in five years, a second conference loss likely doomed that chance only three games into UK’s league schedule.

It is also a breakthrough victory for a South Carolina program that Stoops and UK had consistently had the upper hand against.

It is the first time the Wildcats have lost to the Gamecocks in Lexington since 2012, the final season of the Joker Phillips coaching era, and it was the third overall loss to South Carolina in Stoops’ 10 seasons as Kentucky coach.

For Shane Beamer’s rebuilding project, this was a significant step forward.

2. No Will Levis. Kentucky played without its starting quarterback, who spent the game in a gray sweatsuit with a therapeutic boot on his left foot. Without Levis, UK was mostly unable to get the football to its explosive cast of wideouts.

Backup quarterback Kaiya Sheron, the former Somerset High School star, got the start for UK. It was the first college start for the 6-foot-3, 208-pound redshirt freshman, who had never thrown a pass in a college game until Saturday night.

Utilizied in an understandably conservative game plan, Sheron finished 15-of-27 passing for 178 yards and two touchdowns with one interception.

Sheron was 7-of-14 passing for 64 yards until South Carolina went ahead 24-7. He then engineered a 16-play, 75-yard TD drive.

Sheron has a strong arm, but didn’t get an abundant chance to show it off because Kentucky again had a hard time protecting its QB — a recurring problem in 2022.

The Kentucky quarterback was sacked six times for minus-54 yards. UK has now allowed its QBs to be sacked 25 times in six games.

Sheron and the limited UK offense played from a hole almost the entire game after Kentucky fumbled on an attempted reverse on its initial play from scrimmage and it set up South Carolina for a 2-yard touchdown drive before the contest was one minute old.

In taking a loss in his first career start at UK, Sheron can take some comfort in this: He joins all-time Kentucky quarterback greats Tim Couch, Jared Lorenzen and Andre Woodson, who all lost their first UK starts, too.

3. Third-down kills the Cats. Not shockingly for a team playing a completely-inexperienced QB, Kentucky struggled on third-down conversions. The Cats converted only one of their first eight third-down attempts and finished 3-of-12.

Meanwhile, South Carolina, with a veteran QB in Oklahoma transfer Spencer Rattler, converted 6 of 14 on third down.

4. Special teams continue to hurt UK. Kentucky had a punt blocked in the first half, though the UK defense kept South Carolina from scoring.

UK’s Matt Ruffolo missed a 45-yard field-goal in the first half. That loomed large late in the game when UK scored to pull within 24-14. Obviously, had the field goal been made, it would have been a one-possession game.

Like his father, iconic Virginia Tech head man Frank Beamer, Shane Beamer puts extreme emphasis on special teams. The Gamecocks kicking game kept UK from accumulating even one return yard until Barion Brown returned a punt 11 yards with 2:18 left in the game.

When you are trying to win via a low-possession, ball-control game with a backup QB, you need to be impeccable in the special teams.

Kentucky was far from that.

5. C-Rod moves up the charts. Kentucky star running back Christopher Rodriguez ran for 126 yards on 22 carries. Rodriguez now has 2,938 career rushing yards and has moved past Mark Higgs (2,892) for fifth on UK’s all-time rushing-leaders list.

Fashion police

For its sixth game of 2022, Kentucky wore silver chrome helmets, blue jerseys with white letters and numbers and blue pants.

With its loss, UK is now 10-4 in silver chrome helmets since the start of the 2018 season.