Kids these days, as Kentucky football head coach Joker Phillips said it, have a way of forgetting things.
“I feel like they’re over (the Florida loss),” Phillips said. “Kids get over it quicker than coaches. … As soon as you touch down in Lexington, the phones are starting to blast, the headsets, they’re listening to Nelly and Kanye West.”
“(The pain) lasts a little bit longer for coaches, a lot longer actually than it does for players.”
Having a short memory isn’t such a bad thing after all. Not even 48 hours after suffering a disappointing 48-14 loss to Florida, the UK players were in high spirits at Phillips’ weekly news conference Monday.
The consensus among the team is that Kentucky really wasn’t that far off against Florida. A couple of mistakes were magnified because of the opponent.
As the Cats put the Gators in the rearview mirror and turn their attention forward to their first meeting with Ole Miss since 2006, there is a consistent belief that the 3-0 start was legit and that the huge goals that existed a week ago are still very much alive.
“We’ve just got to look past Florida,” junior safety Winston Guy said. “We lost. We can’t have the burden on our back, so we’ve just got to go out and get ready for Ole Miss and correct the mistakes we made and be more consistent.”
While a reality check was in store in the postgame locker room Saturday, the team’s confidence has not wavered. The foundation of belief that was built during the first three wins has been shaken, but it is far from crumbling.
“We didn’t lose any confidence,” senior offensive tackle Brad Durham said. “We know that we can move the ball and we know that we can stop people on defense. We just had a couple of flaws in the game and it cost us the game. We’re going to get that corrected this week and go all out against Ole Miss.”
Shielding the team from outside opinions has been a challenge for UK this season. Phillips said he reminded his players after they started 2-0 that they weren’t 0-2. Talk radio shows, message boards and public opinion had altered the way the Cats felt about their perfect start.
In that same respect, Phillips said he wants the team to treat the loss the same way. Echoing the thoughts of two-time Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Parcells, Phillips said Kentucky is what it record says it is.
“We’re 3-1,” Phillips said. “We’ve still got an opportunity to have a great season and do something special, but we can’t do anything special if we don’t take care of business and go down there and come away with a victory.”
Neither Phillips nor his players shied away from calling the Ole Miss game a huge game and an “opportunity.” To have a great season and make it to a bigger bowl game this year, the Cats believe they need to win at Ole Miss and make sure one heartbreaking loss doesn’t snowball into a losing streak.
“The SEC is a tricky conference,” senior wide receiver Chris Matthews said. “Somebody can all be high and mighty and then they can lose one game and they’re down at the bottom. Florida is a good team, but they might lose a game or two. We’re still in the running for the SEC championship.”
If Kentucky is to rebound from the loss and remain in the hunt for a favorable Southeastern Conference finish, Phillips said his team will have to cut down on the mental mistakes, the most costly of which was poor tackling. With the help of missed tackles, Florida gashed UK for a season-high 466 yards.
“You’ve got to get people to the ground where they’re just not running through tackles, through defenders,” Phillips said. “In tackling, you’ve got to try to come out the back end of somebody. You can’t think that I’m going to make a tackle from me to you and leave my feet. It just doesn’t happen that way. You’ve got to step on people’s toes.”
After going through some tackling drills the week before the Akron game, UK will revisit some full-speed tackling sessions this week in practice to try to slow Ole Miss quarterback Jeremiah Masoli.
In leading Oregon to a Rose Bowl appearance last year as a Heisman Trophy candidate, Masoli threw for 2,147 yards and 15 touchdowns in addition to 668 yards and 13 scores on the ground. After a highly scrutinized transfer to Ole Miss, Masoli has emerged as a leader and the team’s starting quarterback.
Through three games, Masoli has passed for 733 yards, ran for 219 and led Ole Miss to the nation’s 25th-best offense. Masoli has even drawn comparisons to Heisman winner Tim Tebow, with Phillips calling him “more athletic” than the former Florida star.
“This guy, once he gets out in space, he’s like a running back,” Phillips said. “He’s not trying to run through you, he’s trying to run around you. But he’s also been throwing the ball pretty well.”
Through, around or in the air, UK will have to concentrate on getting whoever has the ball down to the ground better than it did last week. Contrary to the score, Phillips said his team wasn’t that far off from competing with Florida.
How far off, we’ll find out this week at Ole Miss.
“We didn’t want to lose games this year,” Matthews said. “We lost to Florida. We’re going to look past that and we’re going to try to go 11-1.”
