Following the contest, Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops met with media and discussed the Wildcats’ performance.
“Absolutely incredible football game,” Stoops said. “Extremely disappointed for our players and our fans. Very difficult loss. Not sure I’ve been a part of one quite like that where we’re so good in so many ways and absolutely not good enough in so many different ways, as well, so a lot of great things to build on offensively. Haven’t had production like that for some time, and it was so good to see. Defensively, obviously, we have some struggles, and we’ve got to get some things fixed. We are being put on an island on certain situations that we’re not winning enough. We’re not winning enough battles. You heard me talk about that for years, and a team like that puts an awful lot of stress on you sideline to sideline and then obviously with the vertical passing game, and we didn’t keep up with them. We didn’t tackle very good in space and we didn’t cover very good.
“What I did like about our team as compared to last week when we traded jabs or shots or whatever you want to call it, when we took a punch, I loved the fact that our team responded and came right back, and defensively did come up with some stops. That gave us a chance and we came up a few yards short again. Probably, I don’t know, maybe 10 yards for a field goal there. Give them credit, they are playing at an extremely high level in particular on the offensive side and had some tough match ups for us, and we’ve got to play better.”
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