After latest home-field debacle, Mark Stoops needs to ask himself a hard question

Over the last three football seasons, when the Kentucky Wildcats’ performance has bounced up and down like an old-fashioned seesaw, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been in postgame news conferences in which UK head coach Mark Stoops seems genuinely perplexed by the way his team has performed.

After Kentucky turned in a master class in self-sabotage before a Kroger Field crowd of 62,210 in what became a mistake-filled 20-13 loss to Vanderbilt on Saturday night, you can add another chapter to that story.

Following a contest in which UK was penalized a whopping 12 times for 106 yards and had multiple special teams miscues, Stoops was asked in his postgame presser if he had seen any signs of the lack of focus his team exhibited against Vandy in the two prior weeks of practice since Kentucky had last played.

“No. I really didn’t,” Stoops said.

In the run up to the Vanderbilt game, Stoops said he “tried like hell to beat … into our heads to play winning football in all areas.”

Instead, in what promised to be a low-possession game between two ball control offenses, Kentucky did almost everything it could not afford to do to win the game.

The Cats got behind early.

Kentucky went down by double digits at the start of the second half.

UK turned the ball over twice.

Two times, once on a field goal try and once on a PAT, Kentucky place-kicks were thwarted by problems with the exchange between the long snapper and the holder.

Mostly, the Wildcats could not stop committing penalties, many of them in crucial moments.

None of the infractions proved more costly than the false start that UK, down 17-7 late in the third quarter but with the ball inside the Vandy 1-yard line, committed to scuttle what had seemed a certain touchdown drive.

Kentucky (3-3, 1-3 SEC) could not have fired more ordinance into its own feet had it assigned each Wildcats player a howitzer gun.

“When you continuously hurt yourself with penalties, turnovers, missed assignments, not making plays, I’m obviously not getting through to (the UK players),” Stoops said afterward. “I understand what winning football looks like and I know what it doesn’t look like. We certainly didn’t do (winning football) today and I am very disappointed for not getting this team ready.”

The worrisome trends gathering around the Kentucky program might as well be lit in neon.

With the loss to Vandy (4-2, 2-1 SEC) and its magician of an option quarterback Diego Pavia, UK has now lost 10 of its last 12 home games against SEC teams.

I had asked Stoops about Kentucky’s “home-field disadvantage” at his weekly news conference last Monday. He said then he had no theory to explain UK’s dismal, recent home results in conference games.

After the loss to Vanderbilt, Stoops brought up UK’s home struggles versus SEC foes without being asked.

“I’ve looked at it and thought about it and talked to the guys,” Stoops said. “… I talked to (the UK players) openly. … ‘Do we have a lot of people coming in? Do you have ticket problems? Whatever it is, put it away and dial in and commit to doing the things necessary to win in this game.’ Obviously, I did not do a good enough job.”

When the Stoops era ascension in Kentucky’s football fortunes began, the first signs of UK football improvement were when the Wildcats started regularly beating in Lexington teams such as South Carolina (four straight wins in Lexington), Missouri (four straight) and Vanderbilt (four straight).

Well, don’t look now, but UK has lost its most recent home game to every team from the old SEC East except for Florida. The Cats have now lost two straight at home to both South Carolina and Vanderbilt.

At best, that is a sign that the UK program is stagnating. At worst, it is a manifestation of a Wildcats program that is slipping.

Adding to the concern about the arc of Stoops’ program is that, even as Kentucky has gone an overall 17-15 since the start of the 2022 season, the Wildcats have shown in all three years that, when they play clean and with purpose, they are capable of high-level results.

In both 2022 and 2023, that showed for UK with impressive wins over Florida and Louisville. This year, Kentucky played well in upsetting then-No. 6 Mississippi 20-17 in Oxford two weeks ago and in almost taking down then-No. 1 Georgia in Lexington before falling 13-12 on Sept. 14.

Those disciplined performances, however, have been the exception. In too many other games since the start of 2022, sloppy play has defined UK. In the current season, that was the story of both the 31-6 shellacking Kentucky took from South Carolina at Kroger Field and Saturday night’s dispiriting loss to Vanderbilt.

Such inconsistency is the mother’s milk of program mediocrity.

“I’m very disappointed in myself and our (coaching) staff for not getting this team ready,” Stoops said after UK’s face plant vs. Vandy.

Going forward, the hard question Stoops needs to ask himself is why there have been so many examples over the past three seasons of games in which the UK head coach’s message keeps “not getting through” to his team?

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