How does one pick up and continue with the season-long goals after they’ve been shattered into a thousand pieces?That’s the question facing the Kentucky football team as it tries to rebound from its devastating loss to Mississippi State on Saturday’s Homecoming night. The loss was a significant setback in the Cats’ season-long hopes to take the next step in the Southeastern Conference and make it to a bigger bowl game. With four games left, including two on the road, the Cats are in dire need of a particularly strong run down the stretch to define this season as a success.”To me we have to be in postseason play again (for this season to be considered a success),” head coach Rich Brooks said at Monday’s news conference. “My mind of successful would have been climbing the SEC ladder with more SEC wins.”We’ve had a very difficult loss at South Carolina. We’ve had a tough home loss to Mississippi State. One or two of those games could possibly make the difference depending on what we go do from here on forward. We’ll talk about whether we think it was a successful season at the end of the season because right now we’re just trying to win the next game.”After losing such a tough game to Mississippi State, one loaded with heavy bowl game implications – several bowl representatives were in the house Saturday to watch the Cats – UK has no choice but to get off the mat this Saturday against Eastern Kentucky if it wants to call the season a success.Asked how the Cats do that, senior defensive tackle Ricky Lumpkin said they just keep fighting.”(We) watch the film, go back out there this week and go hard,” Lumpkin said. “We’re going to need everybody. We’re going to need the scouts, the scout team offense and defense; it’s just going to have to be a team effort. If not, we can easily take that loss, put our heads down and lose the next four. The next thing you know we’re home for Christmas.”Or we can get down, get ready and get nasty and win these next four and go somewhere warm and play a good team in a bowl game and get our fourth straight bowl win. It’s all going to determine what we want do. I think this is a bigger game than last week because we just came off a loss. This Eastern game is going to tell a lot about our team this year.”Three days ago, it was hard to imagine even talking about the Cats staying home for the holidays, but it’s suddenly become a very real possibility if UK doesn’t right the ship. A loss in any one of the remaining games will likely put the Cats back in Nashville, Tenn., Memphis, Tenn., Shreveport, La., or Birmingham, Ala., and two or three more will put the team in serious jeopardy of a joyless holiday season. That’s how potentially devastating it was for UK to drop its game with Mississippi State, and how much more significance is now placed on the remaining four games.Brooks said it’s important that UK puts the previous week’s game in the rearview mirror and focus solely on EKU, a team he called “dangerous” because a win could make its program’s year, or even decade. “A week ago, I think a lot of people thought we could win out, and now I hear a lot of people don’t think we may win another game,” Brooks said. “That’s kind of the way this thing goes, and the job I have to do is get my players to understand that each week is critically important and that they have to prepare themselves like it’s the last game of the year and it’s the only thing that’s going to make a difference.”Brooks said there’s been a bit of a problem with the lingering effect of the previous week’s games this season. Whether it’s the team getting a little big-headed or full of themselves, he doesn’t know, but Brooks did admit that it’s a lot tougher in today’s society to keep the players in a “cocoon.””They know what’s going on in the world and who’s saying it for the most part if it’s about them,” Brooks said.”It’s much harder to keep the players’ minds from drifting away from reading their press clippings or hearing what their peers are saying about them on the Internet,” Brooks said.”It’s always been a challenge but it’s particularly difficult when you’re dealing with young people who have a lot more going on in life than football,” Brooks said. “That is my life. I have no life right now. They have a life. They have a social life, they have an academic life, they have a family life, they have things going on and people talking to them, and you never know where their frame of mind is.”But it’s my job to get them focused and I’ve got to do a better job.”Brooks admitted that he needs some help from some of the leaders on the team. A few of them need to be a bit more vocal, he said, and speak up when they feel like something is going wrong. One of those guys Brooks might look to is sophomore do-it-all Randall Cobb, who is quickly taking on the fiery personality and soul this team will need if its wants to finish the season strong.Cobb thinks the MSU loss might be a positive effect in the long run.”I think that just brought us back down to Earth,” Cobb said. “I think we got a little high after the Auburn game and after the win over Louisiana-Monroe. All of us just had a little bit of a ‘We finally arrived (feeling).’ This loss is going to put us back in our place.”Is that place back in the Music City Bowl, the Liberty Bowl or in front of the TV for the holidays? Or is it a rallying cry for a season-defining stretch and a destination with a warmer bowl down south?The only way to find that out and to prevent the season from slipping away is just to win, Lumpkin said.”That’s the only way you stop a snowball effect,” Lumpkin said. “This is not going to be easy. We need a win and we need to keep winning.”
Injury update: Both Derrick Locke and cornerback Trevard Lindley are questionable to doubtful this week.
Locke tore some scar tissue in his surgically repaired knee and Lindley continues to battle a high ankle sprain. Lindley ran Sunday at practice without any swelling.
“He’s getting really closer to having a chance to get back on the field,” Brooks said.
Quarterback Mike Hartline ran at Sunday’s practice as well without any swelling, but he did experience some pain. Brooks said it’s still unclear if he will have a chance to return this year.
Offensive lineman Christian Johnson was sent home with the flu and his status is uncertain. True freshman quarterback Morgan Newton dinged his shoulder and his throws will be limited, but he will practice and play Saturday.
