Vicky Graff Photo
Kentucky football fans have been excited for months about this season because of the returning talent coach Mark Stoops has along with the addition of numerous talented transfers.
Now Kentucky coach Mark Stoops says his players are just as excited about Saturday night’s season-opening game against Southern Mississippi.
“We feel that passion and energy, we certainly feel it in the stadium (at practice). We have eight home games and we want to go deliver,” Stoops said Monday. “You have heard me say that many times. I feel a deep obligation to put a team out there that they (UK fans) are proud of. They are excited about it and want to come watch us. That is a good first step.
“Now we have to go play well and we want to do that, it is important to us. To go out there and coaches coach and players play and do the very best we can. We are excited about it, we can’t get too far ahead of ourselves.”
Preseason predictions are being posted. Fans are looking for “upset specials” on the UK schedule that is ranked among the nation’s most difficult and includes games with three of the top six teams in the AP preseason poll and road games at three of the top 16 teams in the poll.
Stoops is emphasizing Southern Mississippi, a team that came into UK and won in 2016 early in Stoops’ career. Stoops knows being a 28-point favorite means nothing once the game starts.
“Afew years back (2016) they took care of us. There were some lessons in that game that I carry with me,” Stoops said. “You’ve heard me talk about scars, calls and plays and things that happened.
“I remember exactly what happened at the end of that half, I remember exactly the call we made, I remember exactly the mistakes I made. You’re thinking they’re running out the clock, I let a call go, I should have called timeout and regrouped. That’s on me, but that was a long time ago but I don’t forget.”
Stoops had his players practice at Kroger Field to get a look at the new light system and ribbon boards that Stoops anticipates helping not only the game environment but also recruiting.
“We did put them (lights) on at times so they wouldn’t see it for the first time in game, but the lights are new as well. It’s one of the reasons why I wanted to get over there,” Stoops said.
However, he also knows playing in the stadium is different than the practice field because the wind can impact punt returns and kickoff returns much more.
“It’s important to do that, playing at night, practicing at night, and also just getting our body acclimated — coming in, having meetings, having breaks, very similar to what we do in game week,” Stoops said. “I think that just coming in and having things like we do on game night (is beneficial). There’s always a long break (during the day on a night game). I’ve talked to other coaches, I’ve talked to other people to see if there’s things that they do differently with the breaks that you have in the afternoon, looked at anything we can do.
“As you know we’ve played some very good games at night … I don’t remember any, but I’m sure we probably played some bad ones. I’m sure it goes both ways, so we’ll see.”
4 Responses
The only thing left for Stoops to do is go to the SEC championship. Now it’s make the playoffs. It’s going to be easier to make the playoffs then to win the SEC championship. Especially now that we added 2 more powerhouses to the conference. Like I said my projection is 11-3 ,10-2(6-2) tied for 3rd in the SEC. We make the playoffs. We win the first game and lose the second game. We finish at #5 or #6 in nation. Tied for most wins ever and most wins in nearly 50 years. I think this will also do one of 2 things. Either Stoops gets a offer somewhere else and takes it or he comes back for one more year.
There was very little discipline last year. Players would make a good play and get in the opposing players face and talk trash or hand him the ball and get a penalty flag.
If a Kentucky player makes a good play he should act like he’s done it before weather he has or not.
The season was over last year by halftime of the Missouri game.
Wether
Stoops is the 5th highest paid college football coach in the country. In a poll of coaches, he was ranked the 19th best college football coach. Stoops has brought Kentucky football to new heights, but we are still a middle of the pack team in the SEC and non relevant in the national title talk. If Kentucky is ever going to make the leap into being an upper echelon team, this is the year to do it. Playing not to lose won’t cut it this year. We play Tennessee, Ole Miss, Texas, and Georgia this year and need to beat two of them to prove we can contend, but we have to win the other 8 games too. That’s a tall order, but there are 9 million reasons why Stoops needs to make it happen with this team.