Kentucky's Offseason Reset: Mark Stoops is asking for more from roster entering 2025

Mark Stoops got behind the mic in the press room at Kroger Field following Kentucky’s season-ending blowout loss to Louisville and expressed the need to make a ton of changes in the offseason and to reset the roster in Lexington.

“In this year we didn’t do a good enough job in any area. There’s just no ways around it. We failed in that area,” Stoops said in his final in-season press conference. “We didn’t have the discipline that we needed. We didn’t play as good as we needed to. Every level needs to improve. Accountability needs to happen.”

“We gotta go back to being who we are and we gotta be very tough and very disciplined and very fundamental. We weren’t always that this year.”

We saw massive roster changes occur in the winter transfer portal window. Now we are starting to hear more about how the program’s operation is changing.

Mark Stoops is now in year 13 in the Bluegrass and has asked more from his strength and conditioning staff heading into the 2025 campaign. Kentucky must try to stay as healthy as possible but the roster must physically make strides before fall camp begins.

“If you look at just philosophically, what we’re doing, we have to protect our players. And I had a long talk with our strength and conditioning team back in December, and once again in January prior to the players arrival, that I’m asking a lot of them. Because they do a remarkable job but there’s areas that I want to improve physically. Part of that is on us to recruit the right players to give them the right bodies to work with that can handle things. But our group does an amazing job,” Stoops explained. “Our strength and conditioning team, they have my full confidence, and they do a great job in a lot of areas but I ask them to push it a little bit.”

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Mark Stoops admitted that some soft tissue injuries could occur during this process, but Kentucky is pushing their roster harder heading into this year, and is asking for more accountability. As the winter workouts shift into practice inside the Nutter Field House and at the practice fields at the Joe Craft Football Training Facility, Kentucky will put on the pads and get after it.

Kentucky will ask this new roster to go through some intense practices after pushing players more than normal during winter workouts.

“We’re going to get back to being who we are. We’re going to be fundamentally good and tough and play the game the right way and we’re going to be physical. It starts there,” Stoops said. “If you don’t have those things you have no chance. You could go back to my day one press conference, I said some form of that, and that’s the truth.”

“We have enough bodies to function and be able to be physical.”

Kentucky has not used their full allotment of practices in the spring in the recent past, and has taken the foot of the gas to keep the roster healthy. Mark Stoops is still cognizant of his program’s overall roster health, but recognizes that the Cats have some important work to get done.

This program’s mission to reset the culture has started with the work in the offseason program and on the field. The current fourth quarter program is pushing the players with the start of spring practice right around the corner. Kentucky is asking for more from the players.

Only time will tell if that adjustment pays off, but Stoops has made some notable operational changes.