Kentucky heads into 2020 as one of the top-five SEC football programs of the past two seasons. College football reporter Bruce Feldman pointed it out after UK’s thrilling 37-30 Belk Bowl win over Virginia Tech on Tuesday.

“Mark Stoops doesn’t get enough credit for what he’s done at UK,” Feldman wrote on Twitter. “His team is 18-8 the past two years.”

That 18-8 mark is behind only LSU (24-3), Alabama (24-3), Georgia (22-5) and Florida (21-5). It’s a better record over the past two seasons than Texas A&M under Jimbo Fisher (17-9) (though UK has not had to play Alabama, LSU or Auburn over the last two seasons).

Kirk Herbstreit quoted Feldman’s tweet and chimed in with more praise for Stoops.

“Not to mention Bruce, adjusting their offense early in the year to Bowden and essentially becoming a 1 dimensional option attacking team. Had 2 TD passes as a team in their last 9 games coming into today!!!! And finished 8-5. Congrats @UKCoachStoops” Herbstreit wrote.

The future looks bright for the Wildcats. UK’s 2020 recruiting class is ranked No. 23 nationally on the 247Sports Composite, which would be the second-highest ranking of Stoops’ tenure. The 2014 class finished ranked No. 22 nationally on the Composite. In one way, the 2020 class is even better as the average Composite rating of each signee in the class (.8839) exceeds all previous Stoops classes, including the 2014 group (.8683).