Prediction: Gamecocks will have to end streak against best Kentucky team yet

This one is hard to figure.

From an objective sense, Kentucky has played better than South Carolina thus far this season. But the same was true of South Carolina when the teams met a season ago, and it didn’t help the Gamecocks.

The Wildcats seem to be about at their best, with a suffocating defense and a running game that’s rolling. South Carolina still seems as if can get more from the passing game, even as the run game got going against Vanderbilt, and the defense has room to improve.

And then there’s the streak, a run in which USC has dropped four in a row, twice while having a team that was “better” at season’s end (2014 and 2017).

The flip side of all this is we don’t really know what a struggling Kentucky looks like. Is it just having the run stuffed and having to pass? Or does this team have something else in there?

Sometimes in college sports, often really, the flows of momentum and narrative are just noise. Teams play to their ability, or to their ability on a given night. But there’s a substantial narrative and momentum rolling for the Wildcats.

They’re good for the first time in forever, coming off a big win and facing a cagy familiar opponent at home. Fans of downtrodden teams oft wait for the other shoe to drop, and this would be the chance.

There’s not much concrete logic to the pick. There really isn’t much in picking college games. But UK is riding high, as USC was when they met last year, and rolling like that, in a raucous sold-out stadium, that’s the setting where old demons rear their heads.

South Carolina 31, Kentucky 28

This story was originally published September 27, 2018 at 3:14 PM.