By Keith Taylor
Kentucky Today
Kentucky coach Mark Stoops has been pleased with his team’s attention to detail during the first of two bye weeks this season.
“They’ve been very much practicing with the intent to improve and I appreciate that,” the Kentucky coach said. “We needed to have a really good day (Wednesday). We had a good, physical practice and I felt like we’re making some improvements.”
Stoops said the Wildcats are “relatively” fresh and healthy following the first three weeks of the season.
“We have some guys who are down with injury but outside of that, our guys are in pretty good shape,” Stoops said. “I really wanted to push them this week. We need to get a little better in a lot of areas. We’ve been working on that and they’ve been great.”
Stoops and his staff have stressed the importance of improving on the defensive end of the floor. Kentucky surrendered 461 in a win over Eastern Michigan last week, a number that wasn’t acceptable to Stoops and his staff.
“It was quite aggravating because I think we got off to a really good start defensively,” Stoops said. “Then, a couple of plays can just shift that momentum so quick, and it did. Giving up those plays just set us back a little bit. And then the same thing in the second half, not being able to get stops. It was aggravating but there’s always stuff to work on.”
Stoops didn’t give any indication on who would start at quarterback for the Wildcats (2-1) when they ake on South Carolina in a 7:45 p.m. kickoff on Sept. 27 in Columbia. Cutter Boley made his first start of the season and the second of his career in the win over Eastern Michigan.
“(He is) just getting more reps in generalm” Stoops said. “You can see him getting better. Just improving, more comfortable. For a young guy, each rep that he takes in a game or in practice, he’s getting better.”
The Cats haven’t started on game preparation for South Carolina, but Stoops said the Wildcats will focus on the intangelibles next week.
“We haven’t done the crowd noise yet,” Stoops said. “We’ll get into that. Next week, we’ll crank that up. We’ll work on the counts, the silent count and work on our operation, do the best we can and preparing for it.”