Beating South Carolina important to Mark Stoops and Cats

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While there continues to be talk nationally about some college football teams ready to pack in the season and maybe even using the coronavirus as an excuse not to play. Not Kentucky. Coach Mark Stoops and his team have not bailed out on any games and even if Stoops indicated he was not completely sold on the Cats playing in a bowl game, Kentucky will accept the bowl bid it is offered — and don’t doubt for a minute that UK will get a bowl bid win or lose Saturday against south Carolina.

Just don’t think winning is not important to Stoops and his team in this final regular-season game Saturday night.

“This is the last week, that is the situation. I have talked about it before but each situation and each week is different. What you are talking about is a fact that it is our last game of the year and it is important. It is important for our seniors to go out the right way,” Stoops said.

“Our motivation is different each and every week, but certainly that is a part of it. You certainly want to end the right way. Each and every year you can go back and look at what it is — a play here and a play there and a game here and a game there. Sometimes it can totally change the outlook of a season.”

He’s right. Think about what this season would seem like if UK had beat both Auburn and Ole Miss, which it could have done. That would put UK 5-4 going into this final game.

Still, the Cats would have four Southeastern Conference wins again if they beat South Carolina and all four wins would be against teams that were originally on UK’s schedule. But playing a 10-game SEC schedule has been brutal for UK — and most other SEC teams.

“The margin for error this year playing 10 conference games, you can see the toll that it has taken on many of the programs in the SEC. It is difficult,” Stoops said. “Anybody that was crying for more conference games better take a hard look at what happened this year to the league.

“It is important to go out with a win and as I also mention all year, each week we hit the reset button and it is extremely important to try to go 1-0 that week. It is a big game for many reasons.”

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