Stakes Higher Than Ever, UK’s Approach Unchanged
It’s a rare thing, for the stakes of a game with three weeks left in the regular season to be so plain and so high.
But here we are. Kentucky will host Georgia this weekend, with the winner clinching a chance to represent the East division in the Southeastern Conference Championship Game.
Excitement, naturally, is surging through the Kentucky fan base. The Wildcats, after a thrilling, improbable comeback win over Missouri last weekend, will be hosting a sold-out crowd and CBS for a national broadcast on Saturday, with SEC Nation airing from the UK campus beforehand.
The hype is inescapable.
“You can’t shy away from it,” Stoops said. “There’s too much information out there. (UK’s players) know what’s going on, and that’s OK. They’re allowed to be excited.”
For that reason, Stoops simply isn’t going to have much to do in the way of motivation leading up to Saturday’s 3:30 p.m. kickoff between the No. 11/12 Wildcats (7-1, 5-1 SEC) and No. 6/6 Bulldogs (7-1, 5-1 SEC).
“They know the importance of it,” Stoops said. “I don’t need to build them up on that, probably more need to calm them down and just again go through the process of what we’ve done to put ourselves in this position, and go about our business and have a normal week. That’s what we need to do, is have a normal week.”
In other words, Kentucky’s situation has changed; its approach must not.
“It’s really about just giving our best preparation today and putting ourselves in the best position to be successful,” Stoops said. “So, I think the situation, it is what it is. They’ve worked hard to put themselves in that position, but we just got to stay consistent and be the best version of ourselves we can be.”
A big part of Monday, as it always is, will be evaluation based on Saturday’s game, a thrilling 15-14 win. UK’s defense played at an extraordinarily high level in the game, while the offense didn’t find its rhythm until the very end. When it did, Terry Wilson and the Wildcat passing game looked better than they have all season.
“Just like always, we will embrace the good things that we did and look at those things on film and certainly get back and look at all the things that we need to do better and really focus and concentrate on those areas here this week and try to improve,” Stoops said. “We’re going to need to play our best football game of the year here this week against a very good Georgia team.”
The Bulldogs will be looking to repeat as SEC East champions on Saturday. Georgia won the division and the conference before advancing to the College Football Playoff Championship Game last season. This season, the Bulldogs have a similarly strong squad, one that ended Florida’s notions of contending for the SEC East with a 36-17 victory over the Gators last week.
“Georgia’s a complete football team,” Stoops said. “They are very, very talented. They’re well coached, and they are good in all phases. They can hurt any given play because of the talent that’s on the field.”
Georgia’s program is at the point where Stoops has been trying to take Kentucky’s. The Wildcats, though they could have played better for three-plus quarters, made progress toward that last week.
“You’ve heard me talk each and every week about how much I love and value this team from the beginning, from the summer,” Stoops said. “That’s the truth. But I also do feel like something changed a bit Saturday: that growth, another step, however you might say it. I don’t know how to put it into words, but I just felt like that truly everybody said that somehow, someway they’re going to do their part to help us win this game. Certainly some guys stepped up a in a really big way, but everybody did. Everybody in there made a difference. I definitely think we evolved another step.”
It’s going to take another step still on Saturday as the Cats play on the biggest stage yet.
“The excitement is going to be there,” Stoops said. “Again, I’ve always embraced that. I always feel the fans, they’re fans. They deserve that and we love that, we need that, we need this energy. That’s how you recruit at another level, that’s how you take your program to another level when you have energy like this. It’s going to be in here every week, and that helps everybody.”
