Kentucky beat South Carolina 35-34 in overtime at Williams-Brice Stadium on Saturday, and it was the largest road comeback in program history. The Wildcats trailed 17-0 in the second quarter. They won it on a two-point conversion. Then their head coach went to the podium and told everyone exactly why he went for two.
Will Stein, in his first season running Kentucky, did not dress it up. “Everybody could see in the country, right?” he said. “We weren’t stopping them much. You gotta go for it.” That is a head coach saying his defense gave him no other option, out loud, about 20 minutes after the biggest win of his career.
How Kentucky Actually Won It
Kenny Minchey finished 28-of-41 for 272 yards and three touchdowns. Kentucky tied the game 27-27 with 4:13 left in regulation. South Carolina got the ball first in overtime and LaNorris Sellers hit Maurice Brown II for a touchdown to go up 34-27.
Minchey answered with a touchdown pass to Henry Boyer. Then, instead of kicking the tying extra point and taking a second overtime, Stein sent his offense back out and Minchey found Willie Rodriguez for the conversion. Game over. Kentucky is 4-1 overall, 2-1 in the SEC and ranked No. 24.
The Decision Was Right And The Reason Was Damning
Going for two there is the correct call, and not because of some analytics chart. It is correct because Stein had watched Sellers do whatever he wanted for four quarters. Sellers put up 226 passing yards and 147 rushing yards with two total touchdowns. If the game went to a second overtime, Kentucky was going to have to get a stop, and Kentucky had not gotten a stop that mattered all day.
So Stein took the one phase he trusted and bet the game on it. That is good coaching. It is also a public admission that half his team is not functional, and he made it voluntarily rather than let a reporter drag it out of him.
What This Says About Kentucky’s Season
A 4-1 start with a road win over South Carolina is a genuine surprise given where this program was. Minchey has given Stein a real offense, and the offense has now bailed the team out of a 17-point hole on the road. Those are not fluke wins.
But a defense that cannot force a punt in crunch time functions as a hard ceiling. Kentucky’s remaining SEC schedule will produce opponents who do not need 17 unanswered points to be dangerous, and Stein will not be able to out-score all of them on fourth-quarter adrenaline. Saturday worked. Saturday was also a warning label.
The encouraging part is that Stein clearly knows it. Coaches who publicly protect a broken unit tend to keep starting the same people for a month. Coaches who say “we weren’t stopping them much” into a microphone are usually about to change something. Kentucky fans should want the second kind, and they just got him on tape.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.