For the second time this season, the Kentucky football team had a bye week on Saturday. The Cats used the \u201coff\u201d week to practice and to heal from injuries. On Monday, UK head coach Mark Stoops said he thought the bye week went well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a really good, productive bye week,\u201d Stoops said. \u201cWe needed to get guys healthy and needed to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Cats are coming off of consecutive Southeastern Conference losses, but the team remains hungry, according to Stoops. It\u2019s one of the things he mentioned when he was asked what he liked most about this year\u2019s team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I love about them is they do have very much of a steady mindset and they\u2019re working hard every day,\u201d Stoops said. \u201cI think it\u2019s a hard-working group. You know what we want our teams to look like each and every year. I feel like this team very much is united and working extremely hard and very, very passionate about getting better each day. And if we stay that way, then we\u2019ll see the results eventually.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Kentucky will play a home football game for the first time in five weeks. The Cats will host No. 21 Texas and Stoops is very happy to be playing in front of a home crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s exciting to be back home,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been a long time and it should be a beautiful night. I know we\u2019ve got a sold out stadium and (we\u2019re) playing a very good football team in Texas, so it should be a great environment and hopefully we\u2019ll produce and play the best game we have all year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Texas will be playing in the Bluegrass State for just the second time in program history. In 1993, the Longhorns lost at Louisville 41-10. Stoops has been impressed with the 2025 version of the Longhorns.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know what you\u2019re getting with Texas,\u201d Stoops said. \u201cA very good football team, very well coached. (I have) a ton of respect for (Texas head coach Steve Sarkisian). I\u2019ve known him for a long time. We\u2019ve gone against each other all the way back to the days out west when I was at Arizona and he was at USC. I always have a ton of respect for him and the way he calls plays.\u201d<\/p>\n
What, specifically, makes this Texas team good? A lot of things, according to Stoops.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re very, very good on every level. Good offense, defense, special teams,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have had a couple of tough games this year but they responded with a very big win in a big rivalry last week. They\u2019re playing very well and it will be another great challenge for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bye week was well spent and the Cats should be rested and ready to play a night game in front of a home crowd on Saturday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For the second time this season, the Kentucky football team had a bye week on Saturday. The Cats…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1534,1533,1492,300,1532,27,29,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-cat-scratches","9":"tag-cat-tales","10":"tag-featured","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-texas-headlines","15":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}