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Gameday: No. 12 Georgia 35, Kentucky 14
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s Kentucky-Georgia football game at Sanford Stadium in Athens, Ga.
Athens, Ga.
For Kentucky football, Saturday’s 35-14 loss at No. 12 Georgia was yet another bleak day at the office.
Normally the bedrock of a Mark Stoops-coached team, the UK defense was cooked on third down by quarterback Gunner Stockton and the Bulldogs to the tune of eight conversions in 12 attempts.
For the 12th SEC contest in a row, the Wildcats offense failed to score more than two touchdowns in a game.
As a program, UK has now lost eight straight and 12 of its past 13 SEC games. Overall, the Wildcats have lost 17 of their past 20 games vs. power conference foes.
If that weren’t enough, for those Kentucky backers yearning for a change at the top of the football program, Stoops did not sound anything like a guy willing to negotiate down the $38 million contractual buyout the University of Kentucky would owe him if it removed him without cause (in other words, for losing) after this season.
“There’s no quit in me,” Stoops said when asked about a Lexington radio report Friday that he had discussed a buyout late last season with UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart.
Nevertheless, into this vortex of swirling negativity, a sliver of UK hope seeped in Saturday.
In front of an announced Sanford Stadium crowd of 93,033, Kentucky redshirt freshman quarterback Cutter Boley gave UK backers more reason to feel positive about his potential as the Wildcats’ long-term answer at QB.
One week after he committed three turnovers that yielded three South Carolina touchdowns in a 35-13 UK loss, Boley acquitted himself well against the No. 12 team in the country.
The 6-foot-5, 220-pound product of Lexington Christian Academy completed 25 of 41 passes for 225 yards and two touchdowns with one interception — which came on a fourth-down pass into the end zone when Boley was right to throw the ball up and hope for something good.
His two touchdown passes were of 29 yards to Josh Kattus in the second quarter and five yards to Kendrick Law in the fourth.
“I thought Cutter grew up some today,” Stoops said.
The statistics show that the Georgia defensive front is nowhere close to as disruptive as was the South Carolina D-line that sacked Boley six times last week in Columbia.
So you need to factor that reduction in pass-rush pressure on the QB into your evaluation of Boley.
Still, in what was his second career SEC road start, Boley looked far more poised than he had the week prior at South Carolina.
“I thought he made big progress from last week to this week,” UK offensive coordinator Bush Hamdan said of Boley. “(His demeanor is) never too high, never too low. That’s been impressive for him. The moment doesn’t seem to be too big.”
After South Carolina’s jail break into the Kentucky backfield last week, UK came out Saturday in a quick passing attack designed to get the ball out of Boley’s hand before defenders could crush the QB.
Boley looked composed running it.
“I was really comfortable with everything we were running,” Boley said. “I think we got into a flow better than we had been in the past. But there’s still more steps we’ve got to take.”
More efficiency in finishing drives is one step Kentucky (2-3, 0-3 SEC) desperately needs to take. On Saturday, four UK drives inside the Georgia 10-yard line yielded only two scores.
One of the barren drives near the Bulldogs goal line ended in a miss on a chip-shot field goal just before halftime; the other finished on Boley’s fourth-down pick in the fourth quarter.
“I feel like we’re just, we’re like, one play away on every drive,” Boley said.
Who knows, if Boley keeps improving, maybe he can even get Kentucky into the end zone for a third time in the same SEC game sometime this season.
I asked Stoops what reason he saw to think the UK offense could start denting opposing end zones with greater regularity over the remainder of the 2025 campaign.
“I thought we improved today with the quarterback play,” Stoops said. “ … I thought Cutter did a nice job of giving (wide receivers) some opportunities (to make plays). I’d like to see us come up and make some of those plays score some more points. And so I think we’re moving in the right direction. Obviously, I’m not pleased with that, you know, not scoring enough points.”
In this season of rampant Kentucky football negativity — and losing as a regular matter while also employing an offensive style that is far less than electrifying will breed a lot negativity — Boley’s play Saturday against a program that is one of the Southeastern Conference’s biggest football brands is at least something UK backers can let themselves dream on a bit.
