Cats Able to "Work on Themselves" in Season-Opening Win
Saturday’s game provided the Kentucky football team with almost everything that head coach Mark Stoops could have wanted.
Most of all, Kentucky got a win, 45-10, over Louisiana-Monroe. But the Cats were also able to accomplish a few other goals.
Kentucky got to show off its new offense, under the direction of offensive coordinator Liam Coen. The defense was able to get a lot of players some actual game reps. And, UK came out of the game relatively healthy.
Kentucky did not play perfectly by any means. That fact can give the UK coaching staff opportunities to teach and to motivate the players ahead of next week’s SEC opener against Missouri.
Overall, Stoops was happy to win to begin the campaign, despite the fact that he sees lots of areas for improvement.
“It was a good start,” Stoops said. “Way too many mistakes that we’ve got to get cleaned up. But it was a good start.”
Louisiana-Monroe scored first, capitalizing on a Will Levis interception. But after that, UK scored 38 straight points, ensuring that the outcome would not be in doubt. That allowed the Cats to work on a few things, something Stoops hoped to get done.
“We worked on ourselves today,” Stoops said. “We needed to get better, get game reps, get confidence.”
Stoops knew that his team would have miscues in the season opener, he just hoped to limit them, in a win.
“It’s always good to get off the start of the season with a victory,” Stoops said. “And, you know, it came with us making some mistakes, like I talked about all through the preseason that we were going to have some highs and some lows in practices and games and throughout the season. There’s going to be some ups and some downs.
With his defensive background, Stoops expects a lot from his defense. Even though his team held ULM to just 87 yards in the game, the UK head man was not satisfied.
“It didn’t feel like that, is that accurate with — do they have 63 plays on 87 yards? It felt a lot more aggravating than that,” Stoops said. “But it’s a credit to Coach (Brad) White and the staff. They were really — they really did a good job of preparing for many things. And I really credit Brad. They were well prepared for a lot of things. They knew they could see a lot of different things.”
As for that new offense, Stoops liked the looks of it in the first game, especially taking chances with some deep balls.
“Obviously it’s what I’ve been looking for, and I’m very happy about that,” Stoops said. “I talked a lot about it in the spring that we were getting the ball completed down the field. Will wasn’t here, but just the offense in general, the receivers gaining some confidence. We built on that this summer, and it was great to see them just complete passes, just the basics. We still have a lot of work to do with making the routine look routine. We have some pitch and catches out there that we’re fighting a little bit, but we’ll continue to get better.”
As the Cats take this week to prepare for the SEC opener against Missouri next Saturday, there will be plenty of things to work on. But being able to correct those things after an easy victory beats the alternative.
