Cats Ready for Another One-Week Season after Productive Bye
Mark Stoops is accustomed to the unique stresses that come with fall Saturdays.
Last week, however, was Kentucky’s bye, meaning he spent his time at his son’s birthday party rather than patrolling the sidelines.
Stoops is a football coach though, so he never strays far from the game he loves. On in the background for much of that party was UK’s next opponent, Vanderbilt, nearly taking down a ranked Florida team.
“Well, Vandy is a team that is very well coached,” Stoops said. “I really have a lot of respect for Derek (Mason), and what he does and how he coaches, and you see a team that is very hungry that plays very hard.”
No different from Stoops’ Kentucky team in that respect.
The Wildcats might have enjoyed a reprieve from the weekly grind of preparing for a new opponent every seven days last week, but that doesn’t mean their time wasn’t productive. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“I thought we had a very good bye week,” Stoops said. “Used it to heal up a bit, get some rest, get a jump on Vandy, continue to build on some of the things were doing well, work on some areas that need improvement. Excited about this opportunity here this week against Vandy.”
Vandy (3-4, 0-3 SEC) offers a chance for the No. 14/17 Wildcats to get the second half of their season off to a good start after they went 5-1 (3-1 SEC) through an impressive first half. With the way the bye falls at the exact midpoint of the season, references to the season’s two halves will be plentiful. That might make for a nice narrative, but the Cats are much more interested in twelfths than halves when it comes to the regular season.
“With the bye being at the sixth week, right in the middle of the season we’re going to be one week at a time,” Stoops said. “You know that I’ve said that all year. We’re going to try and go 1-0. We’re gonna try to win this week and put ourselves in a position to win this week. We have six one-week seasons left.”
With that strong first six weeks, it’s difficult not to look ahead to what UK could accomplish with a similarly strong next six. The challenge for Stoops and company will be to ignore that fact altogether. In past years, that might have been a more significant concern for Stoops. Now, he has a veteran-led team with players who have learned the hard way the importance of focusing on the task at hand.
“Our guys have been around,” Stoops said. “They have experience. They have been through this. They understand what is in front of them and not to look too far ahead. Really, we can’t look further ahead than Monday.”
Monday’s practice was a little different than a typical one, as UK was able to get a jumpstart on preparations for Vanderbilt during the bye week.
“We have had some work on Vandy,” Stoops said. “We did some good against good last week as well, just to play fast and play fast ball. We did get a jump on them a bit so we are further along than a typical Monday. We should be able to go out there and play faster than we would on a typical Monday as well.”
UK will take any jumpstart it can get, because Vanderbilt will present a stiff challenge.
“We’re going to have to play very good football,” Stoops said. “You know that’s my message every week: It’s about us and what we do, and how we prepare, and how we respect the game and our preparation no matter who we’re playing.”
