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The Kentucky football team has spent the entire offseason and all of fall camp waiting for this week. The Cats open the 2024 season against Southern Miss on Saturday (7:45 ET, Kroger Field, SEC Network) and the anticipation of the season opener has the team excited about what’s ahead of them.
UK head coach Mark Stoops realizes that his players will come out of the gates fired up and ready to make big plays immediately.
“I’ve mentioned it before, I’ve talked about it leading into (the season opener), guys want to do too much too early,” Stoops said on Monday at his weekly press conference. “They immediately want the score to be whatever, they immediately want their production, they immediately want it all to happen right now.”
Why is that the case?
“Because they have worked very hard. They’ve run all summer, they’ve done these things, they’ve had all of these practices, so they all want it right now,” Stoops said. “And that’s not going to happen unless they fall back on the things that they were taught and do the little things. If you continue to pile on and do little things right and make routine look routine, big things will eventually happen. It’s hard to preach because guys want it really quickly.”
More than once on Monday, Stoops mentioned taking care of the small things and making simple things look simple, especially with starting quarterback Brock Vandagriff.
“A big thing that we talk about is make the routine (look) routine,” Stoops said. “With him, just continue to operate smoothly, continue to make good decisions and continue to make the simple look simple and the routine look routine. If a guy’s open, hit him and catch and run and protect the football and do the basics. If we continue to do a lot of little things, big things will happen. I think that’s an important message with our team early.”
When asked what he hopes to see from his team in the 2024 opener, Stoops went back to taking care of the little things.
“Number one, control what we can control. Do the little things,” Stoops said. “Take care of our primary responsibility. Guys want to have a big vision all the time and sometimes, you have to zero in on your key, execute and take care of your primary responsibility.”
Specifically, there are some things that the head coach hopes to see from his team against Southern Miss.
“Obviously, the operation, how smooth we are, we want to play clean, you’ve got to protect the football,” Stoops said. “We want to win the turnover battle. But also, just doing the little things.”
3 Responses
That seems to have been one of the biggest problems for Stoops’ teams. They often play up or down to the competition. They can play Georgia to wire and get beat by Vandy.
Having said that, Stoops is right. Just make "your" plays. Be consistent. That’s what helped Saban be so good. Every play was played like it was the last play of the game. He didn’t accept screw ups or missed assignments at any point in the game no matter who they were playing, and it makes a difference when you have another great player ready to go in and prove he can complete the assignment. When you are limited on talent, you are limited on choices.
Great teams play great football against every opponent, regardless of the opponent. UK has not started seasons or games prepared to engage the opponent in this manner too many seasons.
This "slow start" attitude now clearly resides with Stoops. He says, "They immediately want the score to be whatever, they immediately want their production, they immediately want it all to happen right now.”
Well, isn’t that what spring football and August camp should produce, a team ready to make it happen WHEN THE GAMES BEGIN?
If Stoops’ has achieved all he can with this UK program, which increasingly seems to be his attitude with his trying to leave last season and now with this prepared EXCUSE for mediocre performance in GAME 1, then he needs to move on and let UK get a coach who actually will move the UK program to the next level.
This season is the only one that matters at this time, and the Game on Saturday will be very revealing about the prospects for this season.
Kentucky has been dirt diggers most of my life. If Stoops leaves, Ky will go back to cellar dwellers. Recruiting will be non existent. The entitled will get what they deserve.