Aug. 14, 2009

LEXINGTON, Ky. – After one week of practice, the Kentucky football team will have its first major scrimmage of preseason practice on Saturday.

“It’s a proving day for some of the young players, whether they can continue to do the things they looked good doing in drills in more of a game-like situation,” Coach Rich Brooks said. “We’ll try to mix it up a little bit and not have the good go against the good all the time so we can get a little better feel of how a second guy might do against the first group on both sides of the ball. I’m really anxious to get some homest-to-goodeness live tape on my tape.

“We’ll narrow some off this scrimmage. Some guys will be obvious they need more time. Others will be on the bubble. Others may push themselves forward a great deal. The next scrimmage, a week from tomorrow, will be the big one because that’s two weeks before the game.”

The UK coach, entering his seventh season with the Wildcats and 25th as a collegiate head coach, is cautiously optimistic about what he’s seen in the first week of practice.

“You never know where you want to be when you’re going against yourself because every time you make a good play on one side you get mad at the other side,” Brooks said. “There’s no question we’re making some progress, (but) there’s no question we have a long way to go to get ready to play a real game. It’s camp as usual as I see it, only camp with probably more competition at most positions than we’ve had recently.”