Mark Stoops Sees No Weakness in Texas

If Kentucky coach Mark Stoops is right about Texas — and every coach embellishes about opponents — then the Cats seem to be in real trouble.

“There’s no weaknesses on this team, the eye tests, they’re as strong as anybody in the country,” Stoops said about Texas. “ Tell me one group, you look at them offensively – a dynamic play caller, great coach, o-line is completely solid, running backs two great ones, probably more, four; but wide receiver room arguably the best in the country, dynamic tight ends.

“Defensively, front four, they lost some guys to the pros, replaced them in the portal with pros. Really deep, really big. I would say arguably the best secondary in the country, bar none. When you put that together, pretty solid team.”

Pretty solid? Stoops made Texas sound unbeatable going into Saturday afternoon’s game and he likely is right when it comes to Kentucky. The Cats are coming off a win over Murray but it was not overly impressive, especially with the way Murray got pressure early on UK quarterback Brock Vandagriff despite having had almost no pass rush earlier this season.

“I don’t think I need to build up Texas,” Stoops said Monday. “I think it’s pretty evident, they pass the eye test. Sark’s done a really nice job of building a really complete football team. It starts up front, we all know that in this league. He says it, and I say it, everybody says it. They’re really good around those lines as well.

“It starts up front; he made sure, even from day one I remember, the emphasis he put on building an O-line, and that’s evident right now. And then defensively, same thing. He has good depth, they have really good size. Again, they lost a couple of NFL players and went to the portal and got a couple more NFL players. And then the young guys that they have and the depth that they have – pretty good, pretty impressive.”

Kentucky has not played a game at Texas in over 70 years and Stoops has not had a team play there before.

“I do get excited about it and I hope our team does,” Stoops said. “That’s something I hope our team, I have to talk to about, is let’s dial in on our preparation, and you hear me say that a lot but it’s very true, because I hope they’re excited to embrace this great challenge we have.

“But what an opportunity! It does start with being excited today, and tomorrow, and Wednesday and if you don’t do that work, you have no chance.”

The one potential positive for UK is that it has played three of its best games against Ole Miss, Georgia and Tennessee.
 
“Being competitive again hasn’t been our problem, being consistent has been our problem,” Stoops said. “We know we can be competitive, so that’s the part I’ll talk about. Not in particular in a game, or any of that, it’s just our players know what we’re capable of, we need to do that, and we got to have our best shot of the year.”