"Extremely disappointed" Mark Stoops says Kentucky "whooped ourselves"

After facing the postgame press conference, where he said there is a zero percent chance that he steps away on his own accord, Mark Stoops sat down with Tom Leach for his postgame radio interview on the UK Sports Network. His tone didn’t change from one conversation to the other. Stoops sounded beaten down by the 41–0 loss, opening with, “Not what we were looking for. Extremely disappointed. That’s tough.”

From there, Stoops was unwavering about his future and the direction he insists the program can still take. He noted that “he has bosses,” but repeated to the radio listeners that he has no intention of stepping away, not after the growth he sees in the program from last year to now. You know the drill by now: back to work.

“I’m not going nowhere on my account,” Stoops said. “I’ll work my tail off and get this program better. We are better, you know. I know it’s not at all the result we want in particular these last two weeks, but you know, we have the core and we have the nucleus of good players in our program to get it rebuilt the right way. And, you know, in this era, you can do it quicker if you have the resources, which we are getting, which we’re doing, and, hopefully, you know, we’ll put it into the program and get better.”

In the short term, the disappointment in Saturday’s shutout left him at a loss for words. When asked to explain what happened, he told Leach, “It’s hard to say. It really is. We couldn’t get any spark, nothing going to get us any momentum or anything. When we did, there was a penalty or something to set us back. One of those day when they whooped us, and then we whooped ourselves.”

Penalties. Setbacks. Special teams mistakes. No fumble recoveries. Dropped interceptions. “All of it together, it’s not a good result.“