Cats Working on Improvements During Bye Week
The Kentucky football team is in the midst of its first of two bye weeks this season. Following Wednesday’s practice, UK head coach Mark Stoops addressed the media and discussed how the Cats are spending the week with no game ahead on Saturday.
“It’s been a really good start to the week,” Stoops said. “I’ve been very pleased with the players and how attentive they have been. They’ve been very much practicing with the intent to improve and I appreciate that. We needed to have a really good day today. We had a good, physical practice and I felt like we’re making some improvements.”
One of the uses of a bye week is to allow the players to recover from prior games and practices. However, with this bye week coming after only three games, Stoops is employing some different methods.
“Our guys are still relatively fresh,” Stoops said. “We have some guys who are down with injury but outside of that, our guys are in pretty good shape. So I really wanted to push them this week. We need to get a little better in a lot of areas. So, we’ve been working on that and they’ve been great.”
One of the areas of focus this week has been on defense. The Cats gave up 461 yards of total offense against Eastern Michigan and Stoops, along with defensive coordinator Brad White, are attempting to tighten up the defensive unit.
“In the game on Saturday, it was quite aggravating because I think we got off to a really good start defensively,” Stoops said. “Then, a couple of plays can just shift that momentum so quick, and it did. Giving up those plays just set us back a little bit. And then the same thing in the second half, not being able to get stops. It was aggravating but there’s always stuff to work on.”
The Cats go on the road for the first time this season on Sept. 27, visiting South Carolina. Stoops said that the work on the Gamecocks will really start next week.
“We haven’t done the crowd noise yet. We’ll get into that. Next week, we’ll crank that up. We’ll work on the counts, the silent count and work on our operation, do the best we can and preparing for it.”
Quarterback Cutter Boley started his first game this season against EMU and has been taking first-team reps in practice this week. Stoops sees the difference that is making for the redshirt freshman.
“Just getting more reps in general. You can see him getting better. Just improving, more comfortable. For a young guy, each rep that he takes in a game or in practice, he’s getting better.”
The Cats hope that focusing on themselves this week can help the team get better ahead of the first road game of the season next Saturday.
