Stoops: Kentucky Failed to Respond in "Ridiculously Embarrassing" Performance

There’s only one thing we can say about this Kentucky football team, they’re unpredictable. Despite two totally different outcomes, Mark Stoops felt an eery feeling of familiarity when he took the podium following the 31-6 loss to South Carolina.

“Last week after our game I sat in here and said I hadn’t been through anything like that in my time here. This week, I can kinda feel the exact same way,” Stoops opened his postgame press conference. “We’ve been beaten pretty badly by some really good football teams. But I felt like our team always fought back. We talk about it all the time, you get punched, you get hit, you swing back.

“I’m very disappointed with our coaching, our response, the way we played. Last week under all of those chaotic circumstances, we played relatively clean like we’ve coached ’em. Today it didn’t look like we were a very well-coached team. It didn’t look like a team that wanted to respond.”

Stoops built the Kentucky football program with a Blue Collar identity. That meant being tough in the trenches and responding to adversity, no matter the circumstances. They did neither Saturday afternoon and that’s why South Carolina walked all over the Wildcats.

“I just didn’t feel that normal edge and competitive nature that our teams usually play with,” he told Tom Leach in his postgame radio comments. “You put that on top of ridiculously bad execution and it’s a recipe for disaster because we made so many mistakes today that it’s — it’s bad.

“It’s ridiculously embarrassing on my part to have that many mistakes in a game.”

Kentucky was flagged 11 times. If they weren’t pre-snap penalties, they were flags that wiped away big gains. As well as the defense played at times — Kentucky had 12 tackles for loss and limited South Carolina to 252 total yards — two missed assignments in the secondary gave LaNorris Sellers a pair of easy touchdown throws.

“Today it didn’t look like we’re a very well-coached team, and it didn’t look like a team that really wanted to respond. No coach-speak here, that’s 100% on me and on us. No excuses. They beat us in every facet, and we didn’t respond. We didn’t play very good. We didn’t coach very good.”

That’s what makes this loss so startling. Kentucky football fans were shell-shocked. This was not what anyone expected. Stoops and his coaching staff are in a similar boat, but even to a greater degree. When things get bad, Stoops expects his team to deliver counter-punches. That just didn’t happen at all against South Carolina.

“We’re going to respond. When people hit us, we’re going to hit back. I didn’t feel the edge and the attitude and the fight that we normally play with,” Stoops said.

Kentucky has no time to sulk. No. 1 Georgia is coming to town next week and the Dawgs haven’t allowed a touchdown since last year’s SEC Championship Game.

“You don’t know what’s going to happen come game time. Wild things happen,” said the Kentucky head coach. “You have to respond and we didn’t respond very well today.”

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