Stoops: Cats Didn’t Come to Play with a Sense of Urgency
Something was off. When Mark Stoops’ team took the field, they didn’t look like the same team that just won three consecutive SEC games.
“We had really good preparation all week, but I really didn’t feel like we had an edge about us today though. I just didn’t like it. (There was) Just a certain look in our eye,” Stoops said. “I think our players wanted it to happen, and I don’t know, I just got to do a better job of getting them to play with that mentality and that edge.”
Stoops was surprised. His team prepared well all week but they just didn’t bring it today. “I saw great urgency and I saw us preparing to win the game, but I didn’t feel like we played that way today.”
The atmosphere should have helped. He was on his players early and often but, “I don’t think you can manufacture it.”
His players have been able to overcome adversity to win close games before. Tonight, the simply didn’t have the intangible edge that previously put them over the top.
“That’s the difference between winning and losing. It takes extreme discipline in pressure situations and we didn’t execute.”
16 Comments for Stoops: Cats Didn’t Come to Play with a Sense of Urgency
Pretty sure its your play calling, but no, just keep finding scapegoats as you continue to blow every golden opportunity under your tenure here.
Calm down, still going bowling. Everyone was hoping to get 6 wins that season, and thats were we are headed.
Surely, you didn’t buy into the whole “we might win the SEC Championship” did you?
*this season
Yeah, people were hoping for 6 wins, but I don’t think anyone knew our schedule would be this weak. We should be at 7 wins already.
ukbigboard—YES, you bought into it! thats why you have NEVER said a word otherwise until they got beat tonight…btw, hows UL doing with that coach i told you we should have hired?
A big blue wildcat: U R A COMPLETE JACKASS!
The dawgs have more 4 and 5 star players in their senior class alone than we have on our entire roster! So does Tennessee btw. It makes me so sad to know that we have fans that know so little about football. If u can’t see that Stoops has this program headed in the right direction, then please stop watching the games. You clearly know nothing about the sport. U R simply embarrassing urself and the entire fan base!
#rentfree 🙂
Everyone knows it was not Stoops’s fault, you can’t win without urgency. It was the teams fault, not Stoops. If you knew anything about football, you would know urgency is the difference between winning and losing is playing with urgency.
Stoops just needs more time to get better players that play with urgency. The last 4 recruiting classes did not get one player with urgency.
He is doing it the right way. He knows what we need to do to win.
Stoops didn’t come to coach, so it evens out.
Hey look everyone, its Big Blue Shawn, the Louisville troll.
im looking forward to BigBoard copy/pasting all the cheerleaders comments about how we were going to beat Georgia! when can we expect to see it bigboard?
If you want your players to play with a sense of urgency, then you need to coach the game with a sense of urgency. You can’t expect your players to get fired up if you’re running the ball up the middle every single time on 1st and 2nd down and you’re playing prevent defense.
Exactly … when you see fear in your coach’s eyes every 2nd half and they are clearly playing not to lose it is different than looking into a coach’s eyes who is coaching to put the other team away.
Stoopy is starting to sound more and more like Tubby. Not sure why he bothers to even blame the players. There are clearly enough UK football fans who are happy with 6 wins and a crappy bowl game every few years and football will never be held anywhere close to the standard that basketball is held. These 6 win crap bowl games some fans are happy with, if translated to basketball are not even coming close to making the NIT. How would that be?
Hurray … we don’t actually even care so much if we fall apart in the 2nd half and lose to crappy Southern Miss we can win 6 and get to a horrible bowl game. We’re supposed to lose to Florida even in an off year for them … no problem. It’s OK we fell apart in the 2nd half and lost to a crappy Georgia team … we could still beat Austin Peay and get to a crappy bowl game. Yea Tennessee is a wounded gazelle and this is a year a decent team could knock them off but we don’t care because … well you know. The football program has completely given in and ceded football to commuter school UL but that’s OK. We have more wins than last year and we can get to a crappy bowl game.
EdC you are so correct. Hell I wish had become coach and got the UK Job never have to succeed. Just hit .500 which my book is a losing record, and collect my millions. Best job ever.. we just gotta play harder its not the coaching. LOL
Don’t forget you would be in the UK Football Hall of Fame. Apparently Brooks turned the program around. In 7 years 39-47 or 45.3%. Real hero stats those.