After meeting with team leaders, Stoops believes Kentucky will respond to adversity

After a day of reflection, Mark Stoops still isn’t sure what happened vs. South Carolina. During his Monday press conference, Stoops told reporters that after watching the film, he doesn’t question his players’ effort; however, their execution and lack of discipline were “inexcusable” and “embarrassing,” and he’s unsure what led to it.

In his search for answers, Stoops turned to one of the most trusted voices in Kentucky’s locker room: Eli Cox. Stoops asked the sixth-year senior and two-time team captain what he thought went wrong against the Gamecocks. Like Stoops, Cox was flummoxed.

“I think it’s gonna be super important,” Stoops said of team leadership moving forward. “And it started yesterday with guys filtering around the office and I had a conversation with somebody who’s been a captain around here for a while, a great guy, in Eli [Cox]. Eli and I sat there and talked and that’s the first thing I asked him. Like, am I missing something here? Like, what am I missing? And I think he had the same feeling that I had, which was, I mean, did not see that coming. And felt like we have the toughness and the grit and the pride to get things fixed.”

Following the 31-6 loss to the Gamecocks, Stoops said one of the craziest things about his team’s lackluster performance was it came after a great week of practice. Cox echoed that bewilderment in his meeting with Stoops on Sunday.

“Eli is a guy that I trust. He’s mature, he’s smart, he’s been around here forever. And that’s what he said — without me feeding him anything or hearing anything I’m sure I read or said — he’s like, it was a great week. Felt like everybody was really good and tuned in.”

That wasn’t the case on Saturday, when the Cats committed eleven penalties and two turnovers, and couldn’t move the ball more than 200 yards against a South Carolina team that struggled vs. Old Dominion. Kentucky was 3-14 on third down and only completed six passes. It was a very big slice of humble pie for a team with the longest-tenured coach in the SEC that entered the season with high expectations.

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The timing of Kentucky’s all-systems failure couldn’t be worse, which is saying something considering we’re only two games into the season. No. 1 Georgia comes to town on Saturday, as talented and fundamentally sound of a football team as you’ll find. Even if Kentucky plays its best game, the Cats could still lose to the Bulldogs by double-digits. It’s a challenge that would be much easier to embrace coming off a win vs. South Carolina, especially with the added excitement of College Gameday. Now, Stoops gets to see how his team responds after one of the worst losses of his tenure.

“In times like this, who’s going to stand up this week and be great leaders?” Stoops said. “How we do respond to adversity? That’s real leadership.”

“Adversity will reveal a man to himself, right? Through this adversity, we’ll see who responds and who owns it and pulls their own weight, and pulls some people up with them. And I feel fine about that. Again, in conversations with some guys on the team that I have great faith and confidence in, they felt the same way.”

“You know, I always use the 10/80/10 analogy. There’s 10% elite, 80% in the middle, and 10% at the bottom. And before I said a word, guys were telling me, ‘Coach, don’t worry about it. There’s no 10% pulling anybody down.'”