Vicky Graff Photo
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops didn’t try to make more out of Saturday’s spring practice open showcase for fans and media than what it was.
“Today was a very generic, very vanilla, very bland scrimmage but it was still football,” Stoops said. “Overall we had a very productive spring. Glad to put it in the books.”
Kentucky did not have a Blue-White Game in 2024 due to a number of injured players. The Cats avoided the injury bug for the most part this spring but Stoops wanted to limit contact with an abbreviated open practice and scrimmage.
“Last spring I felt like with the injuries that we came out of spring practice, it set us back for the year,” Stoops explained before Saturday’s showcase. “We got the world done through the previous 14 practices that we didn’t do last year because our numbers hurt the way we practiced and it carried over to games last year (when UK went 4-8).”
Stoops said Kentucky did get a receiver hurt early in Saturday’s practice — the one position UK was already hobbling because it had four other receivers injured.
“We got through the whole spring for the most part until this last week with a bunch of nagging injuries, hopefully, nothing season-ending like we had last year,” Stoops said. “Last year, we lost some guys in the spring for season-ending injuries, and that wasn’t good. It’s hard to overcome.”
Stoops noted how practice situations have to be restricted physically with low numbers, something he knows hurt UK going into last season and he did not want to see it repeated.
“Then you get short in one particular area, like the receiver room got towards the end of spring, it really takes away from the whole team, just the way you operate, the way you practice, the way you scrimmage and so on. So, you know, with that being said, I’m happy with the way things went,” Stoops said.
UK FB Fan Day
Photos by Vicky Graff
One Response
Henry Young is my sleeper on this years team. He was playing his best football when he got hurt and missed last year. By midseason he will be unstoppable!