Wildcats reaching rare heights
Kentucky was looking for a signature win in coach Mark Stoops’ tenure going into this season, and now the Wildcats have two of them.
After snapping a 31-game losing streak to Florida with their victory over the Gators two weeks earlier, the Wildcats added another over then-No. 14 Mississippi State last week to reach 4-0 on the season for the first time since 2008.
At No. 17, they are ranked for the first time since 2007 and are 2-0 in the Southeastern Conference for the first time since the 1977 team won all six of its conference games.
The Wildcats (4-0, 2-0 SEC) will be looking to go 5-0 for the first time since 2007 when they host South Carolina (2-1, 1-1 SEC) Saturday night.
Coach Mark Stoops is taking a business-like approach to his team’s recent success.
“Am I proud? Am I grateful? Am I happy? Yes, but it’s still in the moment,” he said. “It’s on to the next. Sure, it’s a great feeling. Go home and enjoy it for a night and move on to the next opponent.
“Yeah I’m proud of the process that’s going on with the team and with the staff and the players buying in, and some things we’ve been talking and preaching and working for years have come to fruition and just want to stay the course. As I say every week, I don’t ever get too far ahead of myself. Gotta prove it again this Saturday.”
Even in the 28-7 Stoops saw plenty of things for the Wildcats to work on.
“There’s many things,” he said. “Defensively, we had two mistakes. On the touchdown drive there were two plays that were our mistakes. We pride ourselves on making the teams earn their yards. Taking nothing away from them — we all know they’re a good football team — but there’s two plays where we absolutely did the wrong thing.”
On one the Wildcats gave up 12 yards and a first down and on the other 8 yards on a first down that was part of Mississippi State’s scoring drive.
“That’s not acceptable,” Stoops said. “We need to be on point 100 percent of the time, and if we do that I don’t know what we would have done. You possibly could have shut them out, I don’t know, but I don’t like giving them two first downs in a scoring drive.”
Offensively, he said, the Wildcats could have done a lot of things better. He cited missed assignments, the receivers not running “crisp” routes, the need for quarterback Terry Wilson to getting where he needs to go quicker, and the offensive line being more physical.
“There’s a lot of things we could do better,” he said.