State of the program: Kentucky Wildcats
- Thread starter wildcatman26
- Start date
I disagree with some of what Greg Ostendorf says here. He basically says the trajectory of our defense will determine the success of our 2016 season. But I think that is only partially true. Our offense and special teams were suspect in November. I believe development of a sound starting quarterback will be the most important factor in our success by far. I am worried about scoring points against the teams on our schedule. Defensive improvement is obviously important too, but everyone on both sides of the ball must prove themselves with so many new coaches joining our staff. Ostendorf says this is the year for Stoops to break through and make it to a bowl. No doubt, this is what everyone wants to hear. Again, I'm not convinced. We have a lot of threads here where people predict season records. Some posters are all over the place, but some of our posters usually get it pretty close. I don't think this is very difficult. If you take emotion out of it and just look at the roster and the schedule, it's usually pretty easy. At the beginning of this basketball season, I predicted 23-8. Hitting it exactly right was luck, but getting close is usually not difficult. In 2014, I predicted our football team would go 5-7. In 2015, I predicted 6-6, which could easily have been right except for a couple of boneheaded plays against Vandy. This year, our team is improved, but we have staff turnover, a problem at quarterback, and a much tougher schedule. To my eyes, this is a 5-7 or 4-8 season in the making. This isn't what people want to hear, but I don't think it is a difficult call to make. I see 2017 being our breakout year.
Everyone makes our schedule out to be so tough - the only big difference is that we sub Alabama for Aub.
If the goal is to make a bowl - we need to find 6 wins:
OOC (4) 3+
Even if we lose at UofL - should win the 3 at home
SEC (8)
We get USC, UGA, Miss St, and Vandy at home
@ Fla, MIzzu, UT, Bama
I like our chances of winning vs. Vandy and SC at home
One other win vs the rest is not out of the question - especially Miss St at home and Mizzu on rd.
We might as well play at Bama, prob not going to beat them anywhere.
If we take a step fwd, every other team we play in getable.
If the goal is to make a bowl - we need to find 6 wins:
OOC (4) 3+
Even if we lose at UofL - should win the 3 at home
SEC (8)
We get USC, UGA, Miss St, and Vandy at home
@ Fla, MIzzu, UT, Bama
I like our chances of winning vs. Vandy and SC at home
One other win vs the rest is not out of the question - especially Miss St at home and Mizzu on rd.
We might as well play at Bama, prob not going to beat them anywhere.
If we take a step fwd, every other team we play in getable.
I think you're pretty much spot on. Until we get a big "George Adams" type of RB its going to be very difficult.
These type of "assessments" are good from the standpoint they are objective but bad from the standpoint they are so vague and generalized. Especially this one. I did notice that these "State of" articles have been done by different authors and some are much better "detailed" than this one.
I do think the one area where the author was correct was in his "trajectory" assessment of "even". The only possible way to evaluate the trajectory as "up" would be based on potential and not performance. And potential means it has not happened yet.
In 2015, the Cats faced "only" 4 pre-season Top 25 teams (MO, AU, TN and GA) on their schedule. Only 1 of those (GA) was on the road. In the end, only 2 teams on that schedule were in the Top 25 (TN and FL) and it turned out to be one of the weakest football schedules UK has played in recent memory. In retrospect, it was a great opportunity for a 6 win season and they fell short. No other way to look at it.
Looking forward, In a consensus of 13 "way too early" 2016 Top 25 lists, the Cats will face 5 top 25 teams (AL, TN, UofL, GA and FL; the last 3 ranked in the 20s). All but GA are on the road and when trying to build your program up it is best to have your "least winnable" game on the road and that certainly seems to be the case this year. So even if all 5 of those teams meet pre-season expectations that leaves 7 games (USM, NM State, SC (with new staff), Vandy, MSU, @ MO (with new staff), and FCS Austin Peay) to find 6 wins. And 6 of those 7 are at home.
It seems like there is always a key stretch in UK's season that ultimately determines the seasonal outcome overall. This year it appears to be the mid-season stretch of games 4 - 8 (SC, @AL, Vandy, OPEN, MSU and @ MO). Forget AL. But SC, Vandy, MSU and MO all seem very winnable.
I won't discount USM as a tough opener (9-5 last season, 13 returnees including QB) but, IMHO, MSU and SC look to the 2 key games to a 6 win season. MSU has beaten the Cats something like 8 times straight but are apparently not getting much respect for 2016. They return 13 starters (7 O and 6 D) but lose all everything QB Prescott. SC returns 8 on defense but only 5 on offense. Muschamp should have some guys to work with defensively but not much on offense and it was offense that got him fired at FL. And, of course, all 3 of those games are at CWS.
We will know more later but, with any kind of "improvement" at all, right now, 6 wins does not seem the least bit unrealistic to me. JMO.
Peace
Last edited:
I tend to think the same. The most athletic players UK has ever signed will be more experienced. Last year's 5-7 team was better than the 5-7 team that came before. There's a positive trend.
UK also has a better roster than 3 teams in the SEC East. MSU will be vulnerable given their graduations and UK has punched above its weight against UofL since Stoops arrived (second half of 2015 notwithstanding).
I'm bullish.
Good post and some good info. And if 6 wins is bull ish, then count me in. But if someone predicted two wins some posters would label it bull ish, as in this thread. None of Brooks teams would have had their records without at least one big upset in the year, about time we made that a regular occurrence, we don't have the impossible talent imbalance to overcome in most games like we used to, with the exception of Bama. And everyone has that problem.
It's too bad that UK fans couldn't post a thread like this on your board without getting banned
I don't understand.
I see nothing there that would or should get you banned from the "host" board.Peace
Well, I for one definitely thing the trajectory is UP, I have argued from the time I have been on here that UK has been shortchanged in the football support, and not by just a little bit. And it always showed up in our recruiting, the only reason Brooks and Co had a chance is that they were also experts (like Stoops and co) in finding and developing under rated players, lots of them 5.2s and under. Just look at the money being spent on the facilities AND coaches now (I had no idea we were three coaches short of most SEC teams until we FINALLY hired them THIS year, Brown was kept on as "Co DC" to save his buyout, Brooks gave Joker part of his salary to keep him on board, etc, etc.) and look at the upgrade in our classes rankings now that we are no longer just a "basketball school". We had the fans before but not the support from the AD, and look at the new $45,000,000 FOOTBALL facility being built entirely from fan donations when no one wanted to donate to mitch's KFund before.
The truth is that our coaches before never had the talent to compete in the SEC, yeah a good season or two, but ONE break even season since probation (which was a killer for us, a bump in the road for Bama) in 06, not 07. Several of our bowl seasons were beating Vandy, upsetting some other SEC team and winning four OOC games. Brooks did a GREAT job with the talent he had, Joker couldn't sustain it------and I don't really blame him that much, the 10 team that he inherited had TWO four stars playing while SEVEN of the SEC teams we played (not Vandy) AVERAGED 38 four stars in their previous four recruiting classes-----plus five stars. And he still upset top ten USC (39 four stars and a five star the four previous four classes, plus a HOF coach) AND came within THREE points of Cam and the NCs. Joker's biggest problem might have been being unable to get much of anything from his top commits, dropouts, grades, rules, injuries, lots of reasons.
Can anyone but the staunchest mitch defender even believe the "recruiting room" still in use until very recently, when you consider the money at stake?
BUT, all better now from a support standpoint, and the recruiting shows it------now we need at least a bowl game SOON to keep the progress going, not a guarantee this year but a great chance IMO, the other top SEC schools are still far ahead of us in the football race and UL has cheated their way ahead.
Still one GLARING discrepancy, which I wonder why I am the only one bringing it up lately, the cost of attendance for a city college 60 miles up the road is TWICE what it is at UK, a legal way (in addition to the MANY illegal ones) to pay your players more.
So, you have to pay all the scholarships the same, so what, about 500 times $2,500 is less than the raise jurich gave BP when NO ONE was bidding for his services, plus the $500,000 bonus he gave him for NOTHING.
If you don't think that extra money isn't important to young people that should be spending all their energy improving their athletic skills, and that it doesn't cause some of them (the dumb ones) to think that they are being cheated and they can get away with getting their extra money illegally then you haven't noticed how full our prisons are.
If this staff doesn't get us to a bowl game this year then why not take it out of their salaries (except for Marrow), how stupid are some of these coaches salaries today, and whoever heard of paying someone millions of dollars a year after they have proven they aren't qualified for the job.
The truth is that our coaches before never had the talent to compete in the SEC, yeah a good season or two, but ONE break even season since probation (which was a killer for us, a bump in the road for Bama) in 06, not 07. Several of our bowl seasons were beating Vandy, upsetting some other SEC team and winning four OOC games. Brooks did a GREAT job with the talent he had, Joker couldn't sustain it------and I don't really blame him that much, the 10 team that he inherited had TWO four stars playing while SEVEN of the SEC teams we played (not Vandy) AVERAGED 38 four stars in their previous four recruiting classes-----plus five stars. And he still upset top ten USC (39 four stars and a five star the four previous four classes, plus a HOF coach) AND came within THREE points of Cam and the NCs. Joker's biggest problem might have been being unable to get much of anything from his top commits, dropouts, grades, rules, injuries, lots of reasons.
Can anyone but the staunchest mitch defender even believe the "recruiting room" still in use until very recently, when you consider the money at stake?
BUT, all better now from a support standpoint, and the recruiting shows it------now we need at least a bowl game SOON to keep the progress going, not a guarantee this year but a great chance IMO, the other top SEC schools are still far ahead of us in the football race and UL has cheated their way ahead.
Still one GLARING discrepancy, which I wonder why I am the only one bringing it up lately, the cost of attendance for a city college 60 miles up the road is TWICE what it is at UK, a legal way (in addition to the MANY illegal ones) to pay your players more.
So, you have to pay all the scholarships the same, so what, about 500 times $2,500 is less than the raise jurich gave BP when NO ONE was bidding for his services, plus the $500,000 bonus he gave him for NOTHING.
If you don't think that extra money isn't important to young people that should be spending all their energy improving their athletic skills, and that it doesn't cause some of them (the dumb ones) to think that they are being cheated and they can get away with getting their extra money illegally then you haven't noticed how full our prisons are.
If this staff doesn't get us to a bowl game this year then why not take it out of their salaries (except for Marrow), how stupid are some of these coaches salaries today, and whoever heard of paying someone millions of dollars a year after they have proven they aren't qualified for the job.
So we start probably 2 or 3 sr's on offense and 3 or 4 sr's on D and it the "same old, next year"????
Last year's schedule was a cake walk compared to most years, but bowl season showed us that the demise of the sec was greatly exaggerated. It was down compared to the last decade of SEC teams. Scar probably wins 7 games in acc coastal or big west. UK goes bowling in either division easy. Ut, uga, uf, aub, scar, missou, and lsu weren't as good as they were hyped preseason but they weren't as God awful as people make out. They love to point out the bad losses and close games but scar beat unc on a neutral field and played Clemson closer than any acc opponent the last half of the season.
Last year's schedule was a cake walk compared to most years, but bowl season showed us that the demise of the sec was greatly exaggerated. It was down compared to the last decade of SEC teams. Scar probably wins 7 games in acc coastal or big west. UK goes bowling in either division easy. Ut, uga, uf, aub, scar, missou, and lsu weren't as good as they were hyped preseason but they weren't as God awful as people make out. They love to point out the bad losses and close games but scar beat unc on a neutral field and played Clemson closer than any acc opponent the last half of the season.