UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY MEDIA CONFERENCE

September 14, 2024 Lexington, Kentucky, USA Coach Mark Stoops Press Conference

Kentucky – 12 , Georgia – 13

MARK STOOPS: Okay. You know, one heck of a football game. Really proud of our players. The way they fought and competed. I thought our coaches did a really good job this week because you can imagine a very challenging week coming off of the way we performed seven days ago in this stadium. The fans, I’ve got to give a shout out to them because obviously we were not proud of the effort a week ago and they showed up again and had a very positive effect on this game and we greatly appreciate your support. We are proud of our players with how hard they played and picking themselves up off of the mat after again, our performance a week ago that none of us were very pleased with. And had to rebound and play the number one ranked team in the country and came out and played them toe to toe. No flukes, no gimmicks, you can’t trick a really good team like that. You have to man up and make plays when you need to. Give them credit. They made more than us. I think you know; I’m not saying I’m pleased with the moral victory. We are 10 years past that. I do care about the way we play. I do care about our preparation. I care about the way, you know, we represent the fan base and the way we represent this university and the way we play. We played hard. I thought we had opportunities to win the game. We had another ball on the ground late with a chance to win. One day that ball will bounce the right way and we will get the opportunity to go down there and cap down It off.

I know, people are going to question the 4th down. You know I have been honest with you for years and if I made a mistake like last week I will tell you. I do not regret punting that ball. I felt like if we went for it there and don’t make it. Our offense, if we stop them, has to go the length of the field. That was going to be tough against that defense. And a predictable pass situation. That’s not our strength. To play to our strength, plenty of time to pin them and get the ball back. What I don’t like is one play during that four minute drive where they had the sail. We have to man that up and not give them that sail route that was completed on their sidelines and that’s the one play that will haunt me right here tonight and for a long time. But again, I am very proud of our coaches and our players.

Let’s be honest. That was a hard week. They responded. And played exceptionally hard. And for that, I appreciate them. We go back to work and try to find the place necessary to finish it off.

Q Coach, At the end of the game there was a lot of attention but with the possession after the first half, I don’t think you took any shots at the end zone when you were driving there. What was kind of the thinking?

MARK STOOPS: I’m not 100% positive on this but I think there have been 29 passes completed in the red zone the last three years. That’s a lot of points. We did take some chances – it was going to be hard – we would take complete momentum away from us if we get a strip sack or fumble or don’t go in at the lead. I thought our offense did a hell of a job possessing it and giving us a chance. Not link we were giving up on that. That’s some hard sledding man.

Q You guys had so many swings there. You said the ball will bounce the right way someday. Can you talk about the – and just how close that was there and the efort he gave?

MARK STOOPS: It was huge. It was a huge hit. You know, I don’t know. It happened fast and I didn’t see it live. I would love to see one of our guys come up and scoop that thing and bounce up to us but Zion obviously put a good hit and jarred the ball loose. You know, we didn’t get it

Q Mark, you was talking about the interception. About how close that was 

MARK STOOPS: I got distracted from another play.

Q Mark, it seems like it’s been a tale between two weeks between South Carolina and Georgia. Was the preparation diferent or anything diferent in practice? Was there anything diferent with the team? What was it?

MARK STOOPS: No, I think our team was embarrassed by the way we played and rightfully so. I said that and I wasn’t very proud of the way we played. As I mentioned to you on Monday, you know, I thought our team did play hard a week ago. We just didn’t play very good or very efficient. We didn’t execute very well. And to play and beat this team you are going to have to make plays. Make competitive plays. You know, play extremely hard. I thought we did that. We had a good recipe to try to get this victory, we just fell a little short

Q Mark, can you tell me about the ofensive line and how hard the back seemed to run all night?

MARK STOOPS: You know, it says a lot about them. Again, let’s be honest, it was a hard week. Nobody around our facility felt very good. And we won’t feel very good tomorrow. But at least I know a little something about this team now. I like the way we fought and responded. And took to coaching. I think that’s what it comes down to is being precise with our execution. You know, everybody gets emotional. Our guys care and they want to win. They want to play well. It comes down to executing. You know, and then you have to make competitive plays. There’s going to be moments in games and moments in the season where there is 50-50 plays and we have to make our fair share to win.

Q Mark, you said you thought you learned something about your team. Do you think you created some sort of ofensive identity or found something there to get twice as many first downs?

MARK STOOPS: You know, 23 first downs against Georgia is hard to do. Obviously, we needed to cap one of those off with a touchdown. That’s where we needed to finish it off or one more possession, one more field goal might have done it as well but we didn’t get the stop. I think, you know, that’s how we want to be. We want to be balanced but it always starts with us with a physical run game. We dressed it up a lot and a lot of pre-snap motions and different things and we tried to put a lot of pressure on the defenses pre-snap. There’s a lot of formations and motions and shifts and there is a lot going on there. But it comes back to blocking, pad level, not getting penalties, backs hitting the holes, running hard. And yeah, I was proud of the effort. I felt like it was a big improvement the way we played.

Q Brock was fighting out there tonight. Not only completing some good throws but running too. What did he show you tonight?

MARK STOOPS: Yeah, he played again like we would expect him to do. I felt like we had a good plan and we gave him a good opportunity. Today he did what he had to. There were several plays left out there that Georgia really made some nice plays at some critical moments as well. That was one of the reasons why they are number one. We had some nice plays designed and maybe got open by a short margin and they made some really nice plays. You know, it’s a credit to them. I thought Brock played well.

Q – Rayner – his leg strength was in question and now he has the longest field goal in the program – what kind of weapon is he?

MARK STOOPS: Yeah it’s very reliable. I feel very good. That’s why you love that ball in your hand giving it a shot there at the end. But yeah, they were all long today. Weren’t they? It felt like it. He has been very steady and always had a calm demeanor and is very accurate in practice and just does his job.

Q Mark, how do you harness this efort so that there aren’t swings?

MARK STOOPS: That’s it. Our guys have to understand that it takes that kind of commitment and that kind of sacrifice to take care of themselves. I mean, all throughout the week these guys are going to be sore. Tomorrow. They’re going to be sore Monday. We are going to put full pads on Tuesday and they’re going to hit each other and they are going to hurt. That’s what we have to do. I think our guys need to understand that mentality. You know, I hope we learned some things through the first three weeks of the season. And we have to just continue to move forward.

Q You said no moral victory. Tonight, you guys held Georgia under 20 points on the road, three times in the last five years that’s the only time that’s happened in those three times. Do you think you guys get up and speed things. Why do they get up so well against the ball?

MARK STOOPS: You know, they are very efficient. There are things you can’t do to them. Some are simulated pressures that we are good at and we got a lot of mileage out of and different things.

They pick everything up. They are very efficient, as I said earlier in the week, I think they have a very cohesive offensive line and it’s a very good group. You know, you got to play football. Yes, we mixed up looks but I think coach White and our staff did a really good job and put us in position. Actually, the one touchdown that we gave up was some movement. They blocked it and cut it back and things get muddy in there. Some very talented players spit it out. I think he went to a touchdown; I think he went to a touchdown down to the one.

Q – Mark, Childress plays the way he did today. What can it do for the defense? 

MARK STOOPS: Zion is a good player. He does a lot of good things. He usually plays well. He gets a little overanxious sometimes, I think early in the season as I mentioned many times in here and throughout the preseason. You know, do your job and then play football. I think Zion has a good feel for the game. He has done some things like any players. You know what I mean. Any mistake he made, you know, he learns from them. It looks like he showed up pretty well today.

KENTUCKY FOOTBALL POSTGAME QUOTES

KENTUCKY VS. No. 1 Georgia  

KROGER FIELD – LEXINGTON, KY.

SEPTEMBER 14, 2024

UK Student-Athletes

#12, Brock Vandergriff, QB 

 On how he felt like he played…

“Obviously could have made some more plays, giving the guys the ball in the perimeter. It felt like we just came up short a little bit obviously but my play could have improved. I think the O-line played well, skill played well, running backs ran the ball well- just a couple plays came down to it and have to be able to complete some of the passes.”

On if he thought the explosive plays were there…

“Well, obviously when you have Barion [Brown] and Dane [Key] we do think we should take the top off from them from outside– they’re not going to give you those one-on-one matchups a lot. As you can see, we had a couple of shots dialed up and the corner bails stuff like that so we get just a deeper zone and you have to take what they give you, chuck the ball down, and sometimes if you’re running out of time in the pocket you know you have to make sure, you just try to get the ball out of your hands. But whenever they’re playing deep and try to take away that stuff because of those threats on the outside– I just have to take what they give you and try to stay on task.”

On his running helping the offense…

“I don’t think about it too much. Just execute when plays come in, keep my eyes on the read key things of that sort and if the read key tells me to pull it then obviously pull it, but I think it’s important if that’s what coach Hamdan thinks is important then I’m going to do whatever he calls to the best of my abilities. I think it’s good for the offense to be able to have a quarterback that can move and stuff like that and coach Marrow was joking with me after about it a little bit– but I think it’s important.”

#11, Zion Childress, DB

On active participation in tackles and performance in game…

“I just came to play today. I played a decent game last week, a fairly good game, I just kept telling myself that was my goal for the rest of the year, to continue to play well every week. Just lead those guys, they’re expecting me to do my job at a high level and they’re expecting me to beat them at a high level.”

On the bounce back from South Carolina performance to Georgia performance…

“The effort was there last week; the execution wasn’t there. So that was the biggest thing, being able to do your job, knowing what you need to do, and knowing your job last week.

On the defense’s sense of cohesion and progress…

“You’ll never be all the way there. There’s always room for improvement. Like I said, everybody that suited up on defense, anybody that suited up today, put in some great effort.”

#16, Alex Raynor, K

On reinforcing Coach Stoops’s confidence in him…

“Yeah, I am so grateful for the coaches and this staff that believe in me, and I wouldn’t be here without them.”

On what range he and the coaches felt comfortable attempting field goals from…

“No, my job is to go out there and do whatever they send me out to do. I feel comfortable anywhere on the field.”

On setting a school record and if he knew it was good…

“Honestly no, it was an ok hit ball, but all the training and stuff that my coaches and I do is about making those miss-hits still go in from a distance especially.”

Georgia Head Coach Kirby Smart

Opening Statement …

“You know, I think I’ll open with immense amount of respect for Coach Stoops. The atmosphere, the culture he created here. I tried to tell everybody all week, nobody listened to me. I know what this teams made out of, I know how tough he coaches, I know several coaches on the staff, I’ve known them for a long time. I have tremendous respect. When they get disrespected like they did last week and they listen to it for a week, they come out ready to play. I think our kids listen to that; they understood it but also think it’s a tough environment to play in. So proud of the resiliency our kids showed. They never flinched. We thought this would be a blow-by-blow game. We talked all week about blow-by-blow, we had more blows than them. And we said that the first chop of the tree doesn’t chop the tree down, it takes sometimes two other sets and two axes. It took every single one tonight to get the job done. What I will say, I’m proud of our team, proud of our leadership. Honestly, we even won this game, the culture. The culture of our team never panicked. I saw more leadership tonight than I’ve seen all season. And you guys asked me a thousand questions about what about this team this, this team this, I don’t know much about this team, but I found out more tonight than I’ve known them this morning. That makes me extremely proud of how they responded, how they handled some difficult situations.”

On how important for them to face adversity and overcome it …

“I’d rather not face it. I mean, I didn’t, I’d prefer to be that way. But I also told people all week. We played on the road to Missouri two years ago I guess, three years ago.? I don’t know, we’ve been on the road to Auburn. I get it. When you go on the road for the first time in the SEC at night, and you keep a team in the game, you don’t start fast. It’s going to be a challenge, and we responded to the challenge. The best thing is we got a lot of things to work on.”

On Georgia’s offense playing with fire …

“Playing with fire or not scoring first? I wouldn’t call that playing with fire, I would call that not playing. Playing with fire is like playing with your hair on fire and playing hard. I do think they play hard. I think we have a really good offensive staff, we have a really good offense, we have people around them, we have a good quarterback. We’ve got to do a good job and go out and execute. I mean say what you want about Kentucky’s defense, but Kentucky’s defense is pretty good to me. We’ll judge that at the end of the year, and I think people are looking at that the wrong way of the South Carolina game. I think Kentucky has a really good defense and I think Clemson’s got a really good defense. We’ve got to do a better job at starting faster.”

On how playing in Kentucky’s atmosphere will help the team and young guys …

“It will be an adventure every time we go on the road. It’s a tough schedule guys, when we got it, I knew it. The first game I pointed out was Kentucky because everybody was talking about the other three on the road, but I was like guys we’re going to Kentucky on the road. And people don’t credit them because they had turnovers against South Carolina, and they didn’t play well against South Carolina. But that team was going to play well tonight, and they did. And we responded.”

Georgia Student-Athletes

#15, Carson Beck, QB

On making adjustments to pull off the win….

“Like you said, it’s not easy. Especially on the road. You go back and look at two road SEC games in the past three years. Missouri 2022, dog fight. Last year, Auburn, dog fight. This year, dog fight. We knew it was going to be a dog fight coming in. We knew it was gonna have to be blow by blow. I think there’s a thing we have to fix. Going to watch the film and improve on those. They’re a physical team and a lot of respect there, but we were able to pull it out.”

On defense still not allowing a touchdown…

“It’s unbelievable. You look at our defensive-line, freshmen are stepping up. We got freshmen all over the field. Guys are being put in places, fighting through injuries, all the above. I’m super proud of them and how they played tonight.”

On seeing Brock Vandagriff…

“Awesome for him. Really proud of him. He played a pretty good game tonight. Haven’t seen him in forever. Actually, I didn’t even get to talk to him or see him after the game. But obviously proud of him and best of luck to him in the future.”

#10, Damon Wilson II, OLB

On assessing the defensive performance today…

“Gotta get better. Coach Smart said, ‘We’re going to have teams that are going to have guys we will compete with’, so we just got to get better from here. This was not our best game. Just got to do more. Monday’s a recovery day.”

On not playing the best, but winning on the road…

“Composure, connection, resiliency. All of those going in. When it gets hard, you have to come together. Can’t separate, can’t fold. CJ was telling us ‘We got to stay connected, stay together.’ Those are our traits. We live by those, abide by those.”

On what the defense would say in order to hold UK to only FGs in the red zone…

“Strike. We got to strike. We got to fight. I mean, we get to the red zone, I think it was 92% run, and we knew they were going to run the ball. So, there was no other thing besides run, run, run. Put our big boys in, they got a strike.”

#12, Julian Humphrey, DB

On some key players missing …

“That’s how it is in practice, we prepare for this, and we all rotate if one can’t play. I pretty much knew what was going to happen going into this game. I just had to prepare myself for it.”

On bigger games ahead…

“The thing about those teams is we have to see what they do. What is their game plan moving forward? How they hit their targets and all that they do.”

On what they learned about themselves today…

“I’ll say that obviously, a big part of our downfall today was how we were missing a lot of guys. I think once we get them back we’ll be more successful. With those guys back well be more up there and better.”

#6, Dominic Lovett, WR

On Kentucky…

“They played with energy and physicality; they played a great game. Props to them. I’m not going to say that we couldn’t get in a rhythm that is simply just a very good team.”

On the lone touchdown…

“That was big, Trevor [Etienne] had been working all week. When there were other numbers off, he stepped up and played big. He did so good.”

On what the team needs to work on in the bye week…

“Everything, we got to go see the doctor we have to get better in all aspects and phases.”