Drake Jackson is one of the UK seniors Mark Stoops would like to end his career with a win in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl. (SEC Photo)
Most years college football coaches insist one of the biggest benefits of playing in a bowl game is the extra practices teams get to prepare for the game. Not only do top players get an extra two or three weeks of practice, younger players who did not play or played only sparingly during the season get some practices devoted to preparing them for the following season.
This season, though, Kentucky coach Mark Stoops is not sure that is true.
“I don’t believe so this year quite honestly because even though the season was shorter remember we had that long practice time in the summer and so we feel like we’ve had a lot of practices,” Stoops said.
Then the coach admitted he might contradict himself a bit.
“There are some freshmen and some young guys that, yes, it’s always important to give him snaps and give him reps and so even with our first couple practices of this bowl season you’re seeing them and I always make sure we get all the young guys going,” Stoops said.
“Yes, in certain ways but no in that we won’t have as many (bowl) practices (this year because of COVID). The season went longer, they got to go home for a little but it’s a bit condensed this year so we wouldn’t have as many.”
Kentucky plays North Carolina State in the TaxSlayer Gator Bowl Saturday in Jacksonville. It will be UK’s fifth straight bowl under Stoops. Kentucky lost the first two but has won the last two.
“Early on when I was really trying to build this program, and I admitted it probably hurt us in the outcome of the first couple of bowl games, but I felt like it was the right thing to do to build the program was to really grind on them and push them during that first couple bowls that we went to,” Stoops said.
Stoops said he thought that was best for the program in the long run.
“I don’t quite feel that way this year so I think there’s a balance there,” Stoops said. “You’re always trying to improve but I think they’ve been through a lot and I just wanted to have a positive experience.”
Just don’t think winning does not matter.
“I think there’s always a fine balance in these bowl games because you certainly want to get a jump start and you want to continue to develop your young players. It sets the tone for the future, but you also want to play well for your seniors,” Stoops said.
“They’ve dedicated so much time and sacrificed so much each and every year, but in particular this year, so it’s important for many reasons. You want to go out and play the very best you can and put a good product on the field every time you strap it up.”
Senior offensive guard Luke Fortner says Stoops makes sure the team always does the work to be prepared for the bowl game but also takes care of the players.
“He makes sure not to run us into the ground or anything like that just because we’ve had a long season. In the past years, we played 12 games and this year 10 games, so he knows that we know how to play football,” Fortner said.
“He knows that maybe three or four really hard practices in a row aren’t going to change the way we play football. He just knows that as long as we get out there and run around, be sharp mentally that it’s going to have a positive result on Saturday.
“I think he does a really good job of understanding that no matter who we’re playing or we’re going that as long as we’re focused on ourselves and were mentally sharp and ready to go that it’s going to be a good game come game day.”
