Stoops, Cats ‘highly motivated’ to finish season strong as they prepare to close out SEC schedule


By Keith Taylor
Kentucky Today

Kentucky hasn’t won a football game in four weeks but coach Mark Stoops isn’t worried about his team’s morale going into the final three weeks of the season.

“I’m very optimistic,” Stoops said. “I know our team, I know our leaders, I’ve seen a lot of them, I’ve talked to a lot of them after the game. They’re highly motivated to finish the season so we got to get back on track.”

The Wildcats (6-3, 4-3) began the season with six straight victories and became bowl eligible after winning their first four league encounters, including wins over traditional conference powerhouses Florida and LSU. A loss to top-ranked Georgia resulted in a downhill spiral for Stoops and his troops that followed with a 31-17 loss at Mississippi State and a 45-42 setback to Tennessee last Saturday.

Kentucky coach Mark Stoops and the Wildcats close out the SEC schedule Saturday at Vanderbilt. (Photo by Les Nicholson, Kentucky Today)

A longtime defensive guru, Stoops has been disappointed in his team’s defense, especially the secondary, the past two weeks. Kentucky gave up several explosive plays against the Volunteers Saturday and failed to stop Tennessee’s passing attack.

“It bothers me — you know, it does,” Stoops said. “The only thing we can control is how we practice, how we improve. I will say after watching the film, the corners I felt like, two games ago, at times, were maybe not competing at the level that I expect out of them and I did see that Saturday. I did see improvement.”

Stoops is hopeful the Wildcats can finish the way they started, beginning with the final conference game of the season at struggling Vanderbilt on Saturday. The Commodores (2-7, 0-5) have yet to win an SEC game in Clark Lea’s first season at the helm. Vandy’s lone wins have been against Colorado State and UConn.

Despite the Commodores’ struggles, Stoops isn’t taking Lea’s squad lightly. Kentucky has won five straight against Vandy, including double-digit wins in the past two meetings in Nashville.

“We fear no one and respect everything, everybody,” he said. “We’re beyond that, we know at that point we respect the game. Do we always play our best? No, I can’t sit here and say that. We don’t. You know and I know, watching football, watch pros, watch college, it’s not like that. I try to tell you that early in the year, it’s not like, ‘That’s a win, that’s a loss, that’s a win, that’s a loss,’ that’s not how it works.

“These are young men that go through a lot. It is our job and our challenge, we have to get them ready every week.”

Stoops knows all too well the importance of not taking the Commodores for granted. In their last visit to Nashville, the Commodores built a 14-3 lead before the Wildcats scored the last 35 points of the game for a 38-14 victory.

Vanderbilt is coming off an open date and dropped a 37-28 loss to Missouri in its last outing on Oct. 30. Lea said the week off gave his team a chance to regroup.

“Hopefully the time off gives us a chance to launch here at the finish of the season,” he said. “We’re battling what every team is battling and that’s the accumulation of the grind and it’s a physical grind, a mental grind.”

Stoops hopes that grind doesn’t transcend into a fourth-straight loss for his squad to end the conference portion of the schedule.

Gametracker: Kentucky at Vanderbilt, 7 p.m., Saturday. TV/Radio: SEC Network, UK Radio Network.

Keith Taylor is the sports editor for Kentucky Today. Reach him at keith.taylor@kentuckytoday.com or via Twitter at keithtaylor21


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