Kentucky coach Will Stein made sure Shane Beamer got his flowers even with the noise around South Carolina getting louder.
After Kentucky’s wild 35-34 overtime win at Williams-Brice Stadium, Stein didn’t just answer questions about the game - he stepped in front of the growing criticism aimed at the Gamecocks’ coach. Stein called Beamer “an elite coach, a great person” and pushed back on the backlash that’s building after South Carolina’s third straight Southeastern Conference loss.
“The noise about him is not fair to him. He is a really excellent coach and has a really, good football team that has played Alabama - you see what they did to people. Mississippi State has one of the best quarterbacks in the country.
“We just fought to the very end. This was an evenly matched game and came down to the very last play.”
Stein’s defense carried extra weight because it wasn’t out of nowhere. Earlier in the week, he said Beamer had gone out of his way to connect with him when Stein was coaching high school football at Lake Travis High School in Texas and Beamer was on the staff at Oklahoma.
That was the backdrop for a Saturday night finish that flipped South Carolina’s day on its head. The Gamecocks jumped out to a 17-0 lead in the second quarter, only to watch Kentucky claw all the way back and finish the job in overtime.
It was South Carolina’s second loss this season after blowing a double-digit lead, and the program still hasn’t won a conference game in more than a calendar year since beating Kentucky 35-13 on Sept. 27, 2025.
For Kentucky, the comeback was historic. Stein, in his first year with the Wildcats after working as an Oregon assistant, improved to 4-1 and became the first coach in school history to win his first two conference road games. The victory was also the biggest road comeback in school history.
The decisive sequence had been in Stein’s mind well before overtime arrived. Once South Carolina scored first in OT, he knew Kentucky would go for two if it answered with a touchdown. He said the Wildcats were worn down and couldn’t slow USC quarterback LaNorris Sellers, whom Stein compared to a “Mack truck running down the field with Ferrari speed.”
Sellers still put up 373 total yards and two touchdowns.
Kentucky’s answer came on Kenny Minchey’s 6-yard touchdown pass to Henry Boyer, trimming the margin to 34-33. From there, the Wildcats went to a two-point play they had been repping for six months. Minchey adjusted the protection before the snap and had enough time to find Henry Rodriguez in the back of the end zone for the winner.
“You’ve got to take chances at some point, and we ran a play that worked to perfection,” Stein said. “.... It was a hell of a throw, hell of a catch, great protection and elite execution.”
In Other News...
South Carolina Suddenly Has A Coaching Question Fans Cant Ignore
South Carolinas season has reached an uneasy point, with the Gamecocks sitting at 0-3 in SEC play under Shane Beamer in his sixth season. The timing only makes the pressure feel heavier, especially with the teams best player, Dylan Stewart, suspended indefinitely after an altercation that has added another layer of uncertainty around a program already searching for answers.
Shane Beamers job is not suddenly on the line by one bad stretch alone, but the conversation around the coaching staff is no longer hypothetical. With the SEC skid mounting and outside speculation already turning toward possible replacements, the question for South Carolina is less about whether fans are noticing and more about how long the school can afford to let the uncertainty linger. [Read more 🡒]
Gamecocks Blew Another Winnable SEC Game And The Questions Are Growing
South Carolina had this one in hand long enough to make the ending sting even more, building a 17-point lead before letting No. 24 Kentucky claw all the way back in a 35-34 overtime loss. The game fit a frustrating pattern for the Gamecocks, who had chances to put it away but kept leaving openings with a Jabree Coleman fumble and failed fourth-down tries that changed the feel of the afternoon in a hurry.
The defeat was another rough marker in SEC play, stretching South Carolinas conference skid to eight straight and undercutting a four-game winning streak over Kentucky that had helped balance the rivalry. For Shane Beamer, the bigger concern is that these losses keep coming in games that feel winnable, which only deepens the questions around what this team has to clean up before the schedule tightens again. [Read more 🡒]
Penn State Already Has A Problem Fans Didn't Expect
South Carolinas loss to Kentucky added another uneasy note to a Week 5 slate that already had plenty of fallout around the country, and it only deepened the pressure on Shane Beamer. For a fan base that came into the season wanting proof the program was moving in the right direction, a setback like that can quickly turn into a bigger conversation about where things stand and how much margin Beamer still has left.
Around the sport, the ripple effects were everywhere, from Michigans shrinking College Football Playoff path to the changing cast at Foxs Big Noon Kickoff. Penn State, meanwhile, is dealing with back-to-back losses under Matt Campbell, the kind of run that turns a promising start into a problem fast and leaves the rest of the year suddenly looking far more complicated than anyone expected. [Read more 🡒]