What Mark Stoops said after Kentucky’s 50-7 win over UT-Martin
By Keith Farner
Published:
There were several eye-popping numbers in Kentucky’s lopsided win over Tennessee-Martin on Saturday. Among then, the Wildcats’ defense held UT-Martin to negative 12 yards rushing, and UK piled up 462 yards rushing itself. That’s part of the reason why UK mustered just 17 passing yards.
“If you out-rush them like that, I can pretty much tell you it’s going to be 100 percent (chance to win),” Stoops said. “… Yeah, you have a pretty good opportunity to win.”
The win made UK bowl eligible at 6-5 as it gets ready for a big game next week against Louisville.
“We don’t take bowl games for granted, because we know we went a lot of years without going to one here,” Stoops said.
About playing so many different players, “Hopefully they’ll be a little bit fresher going into Monday.”
Stoops hesitated to compare bowl teams, but said the early players to his program in Lexington helped lay the foundation.
“With this group, definitely very special because they really did hit some adversity and really looked it right in the eye and moved on and they’ve been really a lot of fun to coach,” he said. “I think through the tough times, through the adversity, it created some identity to this team. So they’re very special to me because of the way they’ve handled things, the way they practice, the way they prepare. The way they compete. They’re an extremely tough group and I greatly appreciate them.”
Stoops said his defense played a pretty dominant game from start to finish.
“If you watched us lately, we’ve been playing fairly solid defense so I think we’re trying to continue to build on the good things we’re doing,” he said. “Brad’s done a really solid job, good job, and all the coaches have and so he’s got them in the right position so we’ve just gotta continue to build on that.”
Stoops added that Lynn Bowden wanted one more series there in the beginning of the second half. Stoops added that Chris Oats will be back next week as it was a one-game suspension.
A former newspaper veteran, Keith Farner is a news manager for Saturday Down South.
