South Carolina seniors driven to avoid 0-4 vs Kentucky

Bryson Allen-Williams does not want to see it come to pass.

He has been part of four South Carolina football teams. The first three lost to Kentucky. The fourth will play the Wildcats this week.

“I don’t want to go out being 0-4 against Kentucky,” Allen-Williams said. “We’re talking about it. We’re making sure that we’re focused. We’re making sure that we’re locked in.”

Will Muschamp’s Gamecocks don’t dwell on the past, but they don’t shy away from bringing it up.

“I told the guys in the locker room after the last ballgame, our seniors haven’t beaten these guys,” Muschamp said of Kentucky. “That’s not something we need to allow to happen.”

“This was a football team that we could not stop the run last year. They bled us out.”

The last three editions of the game have followed different scripts.

▪  2014: An all-offense, no-defense Gamecocks team fell to a middling Kentucky squad, with the Wildcats scoring 21 straight in the fourth quarter to win 45-38.

▪  2015: South Carolina missed scoring chance after scoring chance in a 26-22 loss.

▪  2016: The Wildcats caught USC in the depths of its offensive doldrums and discovered a power-running identity, trampling the Gamecocks up front and winning 17-10.

To this point this season, the Wildcats look little like the Kentucky team that went 5-3 down the stretch last year. USC looks stronger than it was at the end of last season, which was much different than the group that started a three-game slide with that loss in Lexington.

The Gamecocks aim to post a result starkly different than those past three, and the young players are taking up the cause of keeping the older ones from that 0-4.

“That’s who I’m preparing for this week, as far as seniors,” quarterback Jake Bentley said. “To give them that win that they deserve.”

This story was originally published September 12, 2017 at 9:15 PM with the headline "South Carolina seniors driven to avoid 0-4 vs Kentucky."