Football Cats Make 'Great Strides' in Spring Drills
Kentucky’s spring football practice came to an end on Saturday with the spring showcase at Kroger Field. The event was a combination of practice drills and some light scrimmage periods. After the event, UK head coach Mark Stoops addressed the media and summed up the Cats’ spring drills.
“Throughout the spring, I was very proud of this group,” Stoops said. “We definitely got better. We made a lot of strides. We got better throughout the spring. I’m happy with the way things went. It was, overall, a very productive spring.”
One of the things that Stoops and his players have emphasized all spring is doing the little things right. Stoops hopes that getting small things corrected can lead to big results in the fall.
“I think we’ve made great strides. It’s been intentional,” Stoops said. “When you’re not winning enough football games, little things creep up and they’re big things. That’s the bottom line. For us, it’s being accountable to everyone in the building. We’re not going to be perfect. But this group cares about each other. We’ve been intentional about doing things and bringing them together and keeping them accountable to each other and to the program, and I like it.”
One of the areas where the Cats hope to improve in 2025 is in the trenches. Stoops likes the talent he has there on both sides of the ball.
“We’ve got to continue to get better at the line of scrimmage and grow,” Stoops said. “I think we definitely have some bodies to work with on the offensive line and defensive line. We’ve got to continue to maintain that and continue to get better.”
Improved offensive line play will lead to an improved running game, another area that Stoops touched on Saturday.
“I’ve seen growth in the run game all spring,” Stoops said. “We definitely made some strides. We need to continue to work on that. We have to have that physicality and the ability to run the ball to be able to set up the play actions. We’re getting better.”
On defense, Stoops likes where the unit is but, as he did with the entire team, he focused on the little things.
“We’ve got to be dialed in on alignments and assignments and basic execution,” Stoops said. “That sounds really easy, and it is if you just call one or two defenses, but when you do a lot of things, with all the moving pieces, we’ve got to find exactly what we want to do, hone in on it and have the players really dialed in on the little things.”
Although spring practice has come to an end, Stoops reminded the team that there’s still plenty of work ahead.
“I just told the team, this isn’t the end,” Stoops said. “We’re going right back to work, getting in that weight room Monday morning, meetings on Tuesday, we’re right back at it. We’ve got to make sure we don’t lose any of the gains that we made. We have to maintain that in the next three weeks before they take a little break in May. Try to continue to move forward.”
Stoops saw improvement from his team during spring drills and the UK head coach hopes those gains will carry over into the 2025 season.
