The Kentucky football team has spent the entire offseason and fall camp waiting for this week. The Cats open the 2024 season on Saturday against Southern Miss (7:45 ET, Kroger Field, SEC Network), and the anticipation of the season opener has the team excited for what lies ahead.
UK head coach Mark Stoops knows that his players are full of energy from the start and ready to make big plays right away.
“I’ve mentioned it before, I’ve talked about it in the lead-up (to the season opener), the guys want to do too much too soon,” Stoops said Monday at his weekly press conference. “They want the result right now, they want their performance right now, they want everything to happen right now.”
Why is that?
“Because they’ve worked really hard. They’ve been running all summer, they’ve done these things, they’ve done all these drills, so they all want it right away,” Stoops said. “And that’s not going to happen if they don’t go back to what they’ve learned and do the little things. If you keep persisting and doing little things right and making routine look like routine, eventually big things will happen. It’s hard to preach because guys want it really fast.”
Stoops mentioned more than once on Monday that it’s important to take care of the little things and make simple things look easy, especially with starting quarterback Brock Vandagriff.
“We talk about how we make the routine look routine,” Stoops said. “With him, we just have to continue to operate smoothly, continue to make good decisions and continue to make the simple look simple and the routine look routine. When a player is free, you have to beat him, catch and run him, protect the ball and do the fundamentals. If we continue to do a lot of little things, big things will happen. I think that’s an important message for our team.”
When asked what he hopes his team will achieve in the 2024 opening game, Stoops again focused on the little things.
“Number one, control what we can control. Do the little things,” Stoops said. “Take care of your primary responsibility. Guys always want to have a big vision and sometimes you have to focus on your key, execute it and take care of your primary responsibility.”
Specifically, the head coach is hoping for a few things from his team in the game against Southern Miss.
“Obviously the process is how smooth we run, we want to play clean, you have to protect the ball,” Stoops said. “We want to win the battle to win the ball. But we also have to do the little things.”
Doing the little things, making the simple look easy and controlling what the Cats can control will all be the focus Saturday when the season begins at Kroger Field.
