Cats had No Answer for Vanderbilt’s Diego Pavia

14 Responses

1. The way KY played last night, I would give you KY and points against Boyle County High School. Just kidding but not by much. I just don't have any expectations against Louisville. This season has been a bust plain and simple.

2. Best the Cards and Weedwhacker Bowl – here we come !!!

3. Pavia is a handful for every team he plays. The game is slow for him , its like backyard football.. And he has alot of fun doing it.

4. What in the world was this team and coaching staff doing during the week? We acted and showed that we had Zero preparation and expectation of the domination that unfolded in Nashville yesterday. This domination was exactly what the BBN had to deal with in the blowouts by UL and MSU in the last week or so. We were told that our OL would be one of our strengths this year, and it was good in a few games. Where was it at yesterday? Bushman forgot all the he learned and tried in our 3 straight wins. Our 1st and 2nd down executions were terrible all year and they led to 3rd and long. He thought well lets go back to try and pound it up the middle and see what happens. Our first 3 series of ineptitude set the tone for the remainder of the game. Did Brad Davis have a personal bye week last week? He had no clue what was about to be unleashed on the team. Stoops…..he wore his usual clueless demeanor on the sidelines. Did Boley and this team act, at all, like they were playing to win the game and save Stoop's job? UL has not been playing well but their spirits had to be lifted bigtime yesterday and home field advantage could lead to another blowout.

5. How many teams are going to try to hire athe UK HC, OC, OL coach & Secondary coach after the season (officially) ends because of the great coaching performance by the UK HC the past few seasons and his OC the past 2 seasons & some position coaches?

   Vandy has made great strides
   while UK has made sad slides

   Vandy decided not to share the lower end of the SEC with UK anymore and left for higher ground.

   1. Vanderbilt has a great coach who they will probably lose at the end of the year. He will go to one of the many vacancies that are left. That's what great coaches do they elevate a program and then they elevate themself. As you can see we are stuck with Stoops. He's been here 13 years and had job opportunities that were equal to Kentucky but the only opportunity he had to elevate himself the fan base didn't want him there. There were rumors years ago about Auburn and Iowa but I didnt see them schools pull the trigger either because if they would have he would be gone. We had 0% chance to win that game yesterday. We were playing the best offense in about every category in the SEC. We were down 5 starters and 3 backups. So we were playing our third string against the best offense in college football. Our third string sucks. Our second string isn't that great either. Our starters can compete but they are always hurt. I know he held our best player on the defense out. Afari. He will play against Louisville we should get 2-3 starters back against Louisville and that will even the playing field. I do think we beat Louisville who is on a 3 game losing streak. If this game was at the beginning of the season we would lose to Louisville fortunately for us it's the last game. Stoops wants to win this game more than he ever has wanted to win this game. A loss in this game and Brohm has taken the state over. They already took all the good recruits that are coming out of Kentucky this year and we have cleaned house with this since 2017. If we lose against Louisville we are headed in the wrong direction. I do believe if Louisville had our schedule it would be hard for them to make a bowl game. I think if we had there schedule the opportunities are endless. They just got killed by SMU. Enough said. I think we have as good if not a better team than SMU.

   2. Can you imagine how upset TA&M and VT have to be because they missed out on Stoops? Stoops is still DMW.

      1. Nice one, Mike! A&M & VT missed the chance for their programs to “Stoop” down into the lower level of FB programs.

         1. LB…..I like it.

6. Ky is 1–13 in last 2 seasons against SEC teams who have not fired their coach. Keeping Stoops shows Ky is committed to being the bottom team of the SEC.

7. Let me drop a fun nugget. Vanderbilt has the # 1 scoring offense in the SEC. They also #1 in points per drive and red zone offense. They are pretty much #1 in every offensive category. They are the best offense in the SEC and have proved it all year. I have said all year Diego Pavia is the best QB in college football. He should definitely win the Heisman if he played for a powerhouse program he would be #1 in the voting. We were down 5 starters and 3 backups on defense. To all the people that know football it's almost impossible to win. Especially in the SEC if over half of your starters are hurt. Then we are playin third string guys at 3 different positions against the best QB and best offense in the SEC. This calls for a blowout and that's exactly what happened. Afari and a couple more starters were game time decisions. I see the writing on the wall. Stoops held them out to make sure they didn't reinjure there injuries. He wanted to make sure the team was as close to 100% as they can be for the biggest game of the year. I think we are a better team than Louisville. Not much better just a little bit better. Which we are playing them in Louisville and this will even the odds a little more. This game will come down to which team wants it more. Right now I would say Kentucky is the more hungry team and has more to play for than Louisville does. Louisville went from potentially the playoffs 3 weeks ago to 3 losses in a row to very bad teams. If we played in the ACC we would probably go 8-4 maybe even 9-3 this year. Louisville has a very easy schedule. Put Louisville in the SEC and they are probably in the same situation we are. Boley is playing better than Moss is. Louisville has a lot of injuries to key players as well. I think we win this game because the seniors and Afari will want to play another game after the Louisville game. Also they can start another bowl streak this year. This team needs to set the tone for the next couple of years. If we can make a bowl game and get Cutter and the young guns at receiver and tight end all these extra practice reps for the bowl game will go a long way in improving this team for next year. Stoops will want this game more than Brohm. If Stoops loses to Brohm again this year you can kiss recruiting in the state goodbye and that has been the recipe for success during the Stoops tenure. The 2026 class Louisville dominated the state of Kentucky. If we lose this game they will also dominate the state in 2027 recruiting. We swept the state from 2018-2025.

   1. I agree with all, Terry! From Diego to in state recruiting.

8. KY is now women's bball, volleyball, baseball/softball, soccer, and track&rifle schools–thanks to the effects of Mitch Barnhart's and Eli Capiluto's liberal social politics on the university's athletic program–Barnhart has been there for almost 25 yrs, and over the course of that time, his philosophy has slowly taken effect over the entire athletic program. He has never cared about the bball program in the same way that every traditionalist in this state would care about it. It is the lifeblood of the entire athletic dept and he views it as secondary. He never wanted to get rid of Tubby and never would have no matter how long he stayed. His coaching hires have always been either home runs or total busts. He hired Gillispie all because of that run that TX A&M went on in the tournament that year when they beat LOU in RUPP. Then he hired CAL because the whole state knew that was the only choice at the time, otherwise the program was going to be fully in the grave. He has always been in a desperate state over the football program–he has never been willing to go out and do an honest-to-GOD coaching search and find the best available and try to SELL the football program to the coaching world. He has always been 10 to 20 yrs behind the times on the stadium upgrades. He gave the job to Guy Morriss when Mumme got in trouble, and Morriss was the lone remaining assistant from Mumme's staff, having been the offensive line coach. And I thought he actually did a pretty decent job–enough to where Baylor wanted to hire him. So he decided to take that job, so Barney once again had a chance to do something big with the program–he had a chance to get Bill Parcells here–but of course, Barney being Barney couldn't make that happen, so he got the second-best option in Rich Brooks. LOL Now I'll be the first to admit I was wrong about Pappaw Brooks–but he actually did well that first year when he inherited Lorenzen and a few other seniors left over from that group that was with Mumme and Morriss–it was just the next 2 to 3 years that they couldn't seem to put it all together–but Brooks had a major rebuilding project to do, and he did it his way–he began recruiting and putting the pieces in place that set the stage for a 4-year run that was memorable and a hell of a lot of fun–by 2006, he had accumulated names like Woodson, Burton, Little, Johnson, Tamme, Woodyard, Lindley, Kelley, Peters, and Pryor, and they went on a run of 4 straight bowl games, and from 2006 to 2009 accumulated wins against teams like GA (twice), AUB, Ole Miss, LSU, Clemson, FLA ST, and LOU 4 STRAIGHT TIMES. They also had a 4-OT classic against TN that they should have won that ended in a 52-50 shootout. But then Barney struck again when Brooks decided that 2009 would be his final season–again, rather than do a service to the program and find someone GOOD, he took the easy, lazy way out, and named Poker Joker COACH-IN-WAITING. The one and only time in ALL OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS that I have ever heard that term used or seen that be done. COACH-IN-WAITING. WOW. And so now, 15 years later, we have come full circle. We had 3 years of Joker, who ironically enough, became the first coach since Jerry Claiborne to beat Tennessee. But the Joker era bottomed out, ironically enough, with a 40-0 loss to Vandy. Then Barney being Barney, he still didn't actually WANT to get rid of Joker, he made it publicly known how much pain it put him in personally to put Joker out of a job, but that was the DEI coming out in him. He took pride in giving KY FOOTBALL its first black head coach, and he could do it through COACH-IN-WAITING. Easy, convenient, and a virtue-signal to boot–TRUE DEMOCRAT. So then he hired Stoops. And in the span of 13 years, Stoops has taken us full-circle. He rebuilt us from the ashes of Joker, built us up to respectability and then made us competitive in the SEC through recruiting in Big Ten country. And the talent he got through recruiting and the transfer portal between 2016 to 2021 paid off, and it worked for awhile. The 2016 team got the ball rolling, starting a streak of 8 straight years of bowl games. They beat Mississippi St on a FG at the buzzer and knocked off LOU at the pizza stadium in one of the biggest upsets in the series history to end the season with 7 wins and a bowl berth. In 2017, Stoops got the TN monkey off his back, went bowling again, then in 2018 had the best defense in program history since the 70s, with Josh Allen and Mike Edwards leading the way, along with Benny, Boom, and Bowden over on the offensive side of the ball, and Schlarman doing his thing with the Big Blue Wall. They dominated teams physically, and played well in every game except against TN of course, beat Missouri on a crazy-ass TD pass to CJ Conrad at the buzzer, and took TX A&M to OT on the road, and only lost by 3. They destroyed SCAR and Miss St–but the most important win of that year came in the Swamp, where Stoops broke the 40-yr long FLA streak by winning 28-16 wth Benny and Bowden running wild. That win was a major turn for the program overall and for Stoops' career at the time, and I think it definitely helped recruiting for the next few years. And at that time, this was still before NIL, and u had asst coaches all on the same page, trying to develop position players and recruit more depth to keep the position development growing. It worked for awhile. And it was fun to watch while it did. The 2018 team absolutely destroyed LOU 56-10, starting a streak of 5 consecutive wins over the CARDS where the total combined final score over the 5 years came to 217-88—and it was also 6 out of 7 over the CARDS until last year. And did u know? LOU still has not beaten KY at their own stadium since 2014. This coming week, LOU will be looking to end that streak, and I will be curious to see if anybody finds that statistic, because that goes back a long time and I don't think alot of ppl realize that. Anyway, the 2018 team finished with 10 wins for the first time in program history since 1977, and they ended their season with a huge win over Penn St in the Citrus Bowl on New Year's Eve. That 2018 defense was the best defensive team at KY since the 70's, at least based on the statistics…….now, moving on to 2019: I have said in the years since that I believe this was Stoops' best coaching job at KY. They began the year at 2-3 and lost both of their top two QBs for the season, and blew a win over FLA at home that would have broken another streak–but regardless, all of this gave rise to the Lynn Bowden experiment. They totally revamped the offense for Bowden, a WR, to basically run the QB position and the team himself. And it resulted in maybe the most memorable 8-game stretch of the Stoops era. From the time Bowden took over as QB, the team went 6-2 from that point on, beating ARK, MO, Vandy, and LOU, and had multiple chances to beat TN, but came up short, 17-13. But they destroyed LOU 45-13 with Bowden and Chris Rodriguez running wild, and nobody could stop Bowden, even though they knew he was going to be the one with the ball in his hands. Then they saved the best for last: they went to the Belk Bowl, and got down by 8 inside the last 5 mins, but scored two TDs, the second one with 10 secs left on a PERFECT PASS from Bowden to Josh Ali to win the game. That team finished 8-5 with that bowl win after starting 2-3 and losing both QBs. I really do think that was Stoops' best coaching job. And a situation like that today would never work. And even though that was only 6 years ago, it seems like forever ago. COVID and the onset of NIL threw a wrench into what Stoops was building here at KY, so I do give credence to those factors as part of why we are seeing what's happening today, and last year. It has been a steady progression downward the last 5 years. But not before they caught lightning in a bottle for one year, where nearly everything went right, and they had what I think was the best and most COMPLETE team on both sides of the ball, in 2021. COVID cost the team another one of its best defensive units under Stoops in 2020 when they played a 10-game all-SEC schedule only, and went 4-6, but two of the wins came at Miss St, where they gave up only a safety and won 24-2, and then broke the streak at Knoxville by destroying TN 34-7. And they still got to go to a bowl, and got a really big win over NC ST on New Year's Day 2021 to finish 5-6 on a brutal COVID schedule. That set the stage for the best, most complete season under Stoops when he got Will Levis at QB, and Wandale Robinson at WR, and brought Chris Rodriguez back again at RB, and that offense ran wild, esp the second half of the season. And the defense was pretty darn good that year–not to the 2018 level–but pretty good. They opened with a really big win at home against Missouri, then got a huge road win in a barnburner at SCAR–then set the stage for the biggest week in KY Stoops history–the first week of OCT 2021: back to back wins over FLA and LSU at home. They broke the last of the streaks with FLA with that win, then absolutely dominated LSU 42-21 the very next SAT. That put them at 6-0 to open the season for the first time since 1950, and was what I believe the high point of the Stoops era. Actually, ever since that LSU win, it has been a steady progression down–only about 7 wins at home against SEC competition since that game. Their only losses in 2021 were at GA, an egg-layer at Miss St and the biggest missed opportunity against TN at home since 2007. 45-42 TN. They finished their season strong though, racking up 30 or 40-plus points in every game the second half of the season, and absolutely crushed LOU again in their stadium 52-21 as Levis literally ran all over the CARDS and threw the L's-down to boot. It was my favorite of the 5 wins over LOU. Then they went back to the Citrus Bowl again and won a huge barnburner of a game against Iowa 20-17 on New Year's Day 2022 to finish 10-3 for the second time in 4 years. That stretch there from 2018 to 2021 was without question the high point of the Stoops era, and had his best players, best athletes, and biggest/best wins. The slide back down began to commence the following year–in 2022–even tho Levis came back–it did not end up being the kind of year everybody hoped for. They started out 4-0 and won at the Swamp again, went to ranked 12th in the nation, and traveled to Ole Miss with the chance to go 5-0, hit the top 10, with two winnable home games set up AFTER THAT to where they could have been facing TN sitting at 7-0 and ranked top 5 in the country. That's exactly where the big dreams for KY FB ALWAYS DIE…….the most excruciating loss maybe of the entire Stoops era. And the program has never recovered from it. A 22-19 loss where JUST ANY ONE of MANY plays and calls go the other way and it's a win. Instead, Levis gets hurt and is banged up for the rest of the year, misses the next game against SCAR which turns out to be an L, and the season is ultimately over right there. They also lose to Vandy at home, setting the stage for 3 out of 4 losses to them. They did save face at the end of the year though by playing extraordinary defense against GA in a 16-6 loss, and a gritty, gutsy win over LOU again to finish 7-5 and keep the bowl streak alive. But the bowl WINNING streak did not survive, and Iowa got payback in the end. But the Stoops era kind of just died the second two thirds of that season, and it has never come back. 2023 was the first season where NIL really began to start showing up in college football, and by last year it was in full effect. The '23 team did still finish with a winning record, beat FLA again, and upset LOU in yet another stunner at the end of the year at Cardinal Stadium, and maintained the bowl streak for one more year, and ended up playing one of their more gutsy games of the year against Clemson in the bowl, but lost a heartbreaker 38-35. Since then, Stoops has brought us back to about where we were when he first came here. But it's interesting to look back and see how everything played out and the timing in which it all became unraveled. I just think Mitch Barnhart is one of the WORST ADs in the country–that sports bureaucracy establishment considers him one of the best–but it's the ATHLETICS aspect of the job itself is where he SUCKS!!!!! And his contracts and coaching hires. Lifetime contracts, coaches-in-waiting, $40 million buyouts payable within 60 days, not wanting to fire coaches that he SHOULD–its just the things that I have seen at KY regarding Barnhart and coaches' deals are things I have never seen done nor heard of at any other schools since I have been following college sports. That alone tells me there's a problem with him. Hopefully the rumors are true: that he is close to retirement–because I want him OUT, and I have wanted him out for a long time. The basketball and football coaching changes that have been needed aside, I have felt that the entire UK athletics dept as a whole has been in dire need for a complete, entire overhaul for a long time now, and if Barney leaves, then I think there's a good chance that u will see that.

   1. A comprehensive evaluation of an AD who has failed and failed and that means the administrators above him have also FAILED!

      Nice job, James!

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