Bowl Prep Underway for Football Cats
The Kentucky football team returned to practice on Friday as they begin their preparations for the Citrus Bowl on Jan. 1. And the Cats are excited to get started again.
UK head coach Mark Stoops was pleased with his team’s effort on Friday. And he was pleased to get started on a familiar bowl schedule.
“Even today, being off for almost two weeks, just kind of reinforced the importance of getting out there,” Stoops said. “Today was pushing it, for us, to get back out there. But it’s what I’ve done and we’ve had some success with the way we’ve practiced so I wanted to keep the routine the way it’s been the past several years. But it was good. Once we get out there, it’s always fun. We were actually much more sharp than I thought we would be.”
Sometimes, teams simply go through the motions when it comes to bowl games. Stoops is not worried about his team being affected by something like that.
“There’s no question. If you’re a competitor, you go out there and play to win,” Stoops said. “Today was our first day of prep for the bowl game and I was really impressed with their energy and their focus. Today was just about fundamentally getting better.”
Senior defensive end Josh Paschal agrees that the Cats will have plenty of reason for motivation. Paschal knows that UK still has a lot to accomplish.
“I think it comes down to who wants it more,” Paschal said. “When you get to that bowl game, it depends on what team shows up on that game day. Is it that team that was just there for the gifts, just there for the travel or (to go to) Universal (Studios theme park), or if it was that team that wanted to play in the game and go get that win. It will come down to which team brings that mentality.”
For Paschal, his final game in a UK uniform will be the return to a site where the Cats had a prior triumph. In the Citrus Bowl following the 2018 season, Kentucky topped Penn State, a game that Paschal remembers well.
“It means a lot because, at the end of the day, it’s a great bowl game to play in,” Paschal said. “We played in it in 2018 and had a lot of fun. This is going to be the same exact thing. We’re playing a great Big Ten team. Whoever wins this game will be the Citrus Bowl champion, so we want to go into that game with that mentality.”
Paschal appreciates how the UK coaching staff is able to balance having fun with taking care of business.
“Coach Stoops does a great job of making sure that we know that it’s a bowl trip, it supposed to be fun, it’s a reward,” Paschal said. “But it’s a business trip as well.”
The Cats hope that another trip to Orlando will produce similar results as those that UK experienced the last time around.
