Kirby Smart Hopes Kentucky Fans Appreciate Mark Stoops

Mark Stoops is feeling the heat. The winningest coach in program history hasn’t been doing a whole lot of winning lately. Since Kentucky celebrated his record-breaking win ahead of the Youngstown State win in 2022, Stoops is 8-22 against Power Conference foes.

The fan frustration is palpable, particularly after another embarrassing loss to South Carolina. The coin flip game turned into a 35-13 blowout loss after four second-quarter turnovers, giving Shane Beamer his fourth straight win over the Wildcats. Now, Kentucky is staring down a barrel, with games at Georgia, against Texas, and Tennessee on the immediate horizon.

Finding a light at the end of the tunnel is a challenge for Kentucky football fans. Ahead of the Wildcats’ trip to Georgia, head coach Kirby Smart looked to the past to commend one of his closest colleagues in the SEC.

“Mark’s one of my close friends because we’ve been in it the longest together. He’s been in it longer than me. I text him all the time,” Smart said on Monday.

“It’s really amazing what he’s done at Kentucky. It’s one of those things, I hope they appreciate what he’s done because he’s done some incredible things, broken some records up there, been extremely competitive in our league. That’s not necessarily by record, I mean it is by record sometimes, but the games that he’s been in and the way they’ve played is incredible. You can tell he inspires his team to play extremely hard and they’re always physical.”

Stoops Plays Physical Style That Creates Close Games

Stoops’ style of play has created plenty of close games in this series, even though Kentucky has never knocked off Georgia. The closest call was a year ago. Zion Childress’ pick-6 was overturned, and yet it still was a slobber-knocker into the fourth. Kentucky trailed 13-12 to the top-ranked team in the country when Stoops elected to punt the ball back to Georgia late in the fourth quarter, and the Cats never got another real shot to put the Dawgs to bed.

Not every game between these two goes down to the wire, but it always feels too close for comfort for Georgia fans. Stoops’ brand of physical football drags down the Dawgs and the two teams play in the mud.

“Their backs are physical. Every time we play them, their offensive line. They have a defensive head coach who believes in running the ball. They have really good run schemes, and they have really big physical guys, and their backs match their O-line in terms of size, both backs,” said Smart.

Georgia will not be overlooking this Kentucky football team. After all, Alabama just went to Sanford Stadium and beat them at night, something that hadn’t been done since 2009. Smart hopes that wake-up call will have his team ready for a Noon kickoff.

“It’s called Kentucky. We gotta go play a really good football team,” said Smart. “I’m glad that they were affected and hurt (by the loss). There’s a lot of football teams right now where the kids don’t care. When people hurt, you usually get a better response. You get a better mechanism of buy-in or doubling-down or something, of knowing who I am and knowing what I’ve got to work on. That part excites me.”