Kentucky and Ole Miss are meeting this week in Lexington, but one of them will drop to 0-2 despite the possibility of playing well in two games.

That’s the nature of this 10-game conference-only schedule, Kentucky coach Mark Stoops said Wednesday on the SEC coaches media teleconference. Moral victories don’t show up in the standings or postseason destinations.

“It’s gonna be a long year, you know?,” Stoops said. “You could have that same discussion with a lot of people every week, you know, and that’s what I told our team, you know, in the locker room if 50% of our league, you know was on the same side as we were, you know, and none of us like it and, you know. I’m sure Lane would answer it the same way I do is, we’re not interested in being competitive, you know we’re interested in winning the games and. And I felt like we put our team in a position to do that. We just got to finish it we got to play better in critical moments we can’t make those mistakes against a quality team like Auburn.”

Stoops also repeatedly declined to address the controversial goal-line play against Auburn last week.