Kentucky Wildcats fans were embarrassed with our team’s effort yesterday. This game marked the fourth straight loss to the Tennessee Volunteers; the final score was 52-21 and with the loss, Kentucky drops to 4-4, 2-4 in the Southeastern Conference. Tennessee improves to 4-4, 2-3 in the SEC. Kentucky needed this win badly after losing two straight games. Instead, the streak is now at three.
Kentucky is 1-30 over the last 31 years against Tennessee, only winning once in 2011 when Kentucky won 10-7 and stopped a 26-game losing streak to the Vols,
We have spent the last few years hearing phrases like Yahtzee, Why Not and Are You With Me? I didn’t see anything that even remotely deserved a Yahtzee yesterday. The only thing that I saw was a smackdown that was not fun to watch. I would think the Wildcats could have at least showed some effort at Commonwealth Stadium with a crowd of 60,886.
After the game, Stoops had some thoughts of his own. He started the pregame press conference saying.
It’s not acceptable. It’s not okay. And not very pleased. There are a lot of things that we need to do better that we will. It starts with me.
I’ve got to do a better job of getting the team prepared, our coaches prepared, and not a very good effort.
Give them credit, they beat our butts in all phases. They were much more physical than us. And we’ve got to play with a lot stronger attitude and mentality than that.
So, we’ll get back to work. Again, very frustrated, very ticked off the way we played. We have got to play better than that, and we will play better than that, and we will go back to work. We’re 4-4? 4-4.
When asked if he sensed the frustration in the locker room, Mark Stoops said.
Yeah, I’m sure. I’m sure they are. I’m sure the players are frustrated. They ought to be. They ought to be a little bit mad and upset. We need to play better.
Those are disappointing quotes considering what Coach Mark Stoops said earlier this week about the game. He said.
“It’s always a challenge. I talked about that last week. I thought, with everything that they did and winning some one-on-ones, when we didn’t do that, I thought some things (went bad). We have to do a better job of staying with the plan and just counting on our players to step up. You try to do some things to protect, but you can’t do that. There is not a lot of magical things you can do all the time. You have to win some one-on-one plays, especially when teams put you in the run-pass conflict all the time and can hurt you in the pass game. We will have our hands full and have a good plan, but we have to win some one-on-one battles and cover some people. This group is a lot like last week where the deception and the power run game off the deception with the flying motions and all of that, then they have great play-action pass off of it as well.”
As a Kentucky Wildcats football fan for over 30 years, today I think Kentucky Football is just embarrassing. Comment below some word of encouragement.
