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Did Cats overlook Bulldogs?

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LEXINGTON – Sophomore superman Randall Cobb hinted Saturday night in the sad-to-the-point-of-morbid post-game interview room that the Kentucky Wildcats may have been caught over-looking the Mississippi State Bulldogs.

MSU ran around and through Kentucky on its way to a 31-24 victory, and in that single, 60-minute swoop, the Bulldogs sapped two weeks worth of momentum for the Wildcats and severely damaged Kentucky’s post-season hopes.

UK could have improved to 5-3 and gained a world of confidence with a victory over the Bulldogs. Now the Wildcats are losers of nearly all the confidence gained by the two straight wins coming into that game and very much see their season hanging in the balance with four games to go.

“I think a week ago a lot of people were thinking we could win out, and now those people are thinking we may not win another game,” said UK coach Rich Brooks on Monday.

I suspect, though no one in the UK camp would admit it, that they surprised themselves with a 21-14 victory at Auburn on Oct. 17. The Wildcats followed that, of course, with the 36-13 home win over a good Louisiana-Monroe team.

“I think it just brought us back down to Earth,” Cobb said Monday of the Mississippi State loss. “I think we got a little bit high after the Auburn game and after the win over Monroe, and I think all of us had a little bit of ‘We’ve finally arrived.’ I think this loss is going to put us back in our place.

“We knew how important that game was, and maybe we lost a little bit of confidence,” Cobb added.

Shock to reality
“Mississippi State was a shock to reality,” said UK junior defensive tackle Ricky Lumpkin. “I think we were a little high, so the loss will probably help us. We won’t know for sure until this week and the upcoming weeks when we see what happens. It might have been something we needed, or maybe we didn’t need it and it will do more damage than good.”

The Wildcats hope to get well with Eastern Kentucky coming to Commonwealth Stadium Saturday (1 p.m. kickoff, on WKYT-27, FPB 6). A road game at Vanderbilt follows on Nov. 14, then another road game at Georgia on Nov. 21 and a regular-season finale Nov. 28 against Tennessee at Commonwealth.

Chances are the Wildcats better win these next two games if they hope to get to six wins and gain bowl eligibility. A win over Georgia or Tennessee might enable Kentucky to go bowling south of Tennessee. But, and I can’t emphasize this enough, it appears that the Mississippi State debacle took care of any looking ahead for this team.

When asked how the Wildcats can keep the MSU hangover from snowballing, Lumpkin said simply: “Win.”

Brooks is a fascinating man in a lot of ways. For one thing, there may not be a more honest man on the planet, let alone in coaching. Second, he’s thoughtful, and third, he never clouds reality with macho. Brooks has a strong enough sense of self to admit when he makes mistakes.

And by the way on a related note, a reminder may be in order here that there aren’t any perfect coaches out there. OK?
Saturday’s loss sparked a lot of discussion with Brooks about the definition of success and the psychology of coaching and playing football, and how each side, coaches and players, deal with each other.

Defining success
When asked if this season can still be a success for Kentucky, Brooks said: “Success is a very broad description, and it depends on who you are talking to. To me, we have to be in postseason play again, and in my mind success would have been climbing the SEC ladder with more SEC wins (UK is 1-4 in conference).

“We had a very difficult loss at South Carolina and a tough home loss to Mississippi State, and one or two of those games could make the difference depending on what we do from here on forward.

“We’ll talk about whether we think it was a successful season at the end of the season, because right now we’re just trying to win the next game. Sometimes I think we give too much attention to what’s going to happen (further down the road).

“What I have to do is get my players to understand that each week is critically important, and they have to prepare themselves like it’s the last game of the year, and it’s the only thing that’s going to make a difference. Obviously I didn’t get that done last week, so I’m concerned about it, and we need to take care of business this week.”

Brooks was then asked about a comment made by freshman quarterback Morgan Newton immediately after the Mississippi State game. Newton suggested his teammates may have lost some confidence in him in the defeat.

“Morgan made some rookie mistakes,” Brooks said. “But a lot of the veterans made mistakes, too, so there shouldn’t be anybody on our team pointing the finger at anybody else right now because we’ve got enough blame to go around, including the guy (Brooks) at the podium right here.”

Brooks was then asked the million dollar question that coaches in all sports, at all levels face frequently: Why is it, especially in a game like football where you may only have a dozen games to get up for, why is it that young people occasionally lay an emotional egg as the Wildcats did against MSU?

Just not ready
“You’ve heard me have this conversation too many times,” he said, sighing, “at least once a year, about how we weren’t as ready to play as we needed to be, and how could we NOT be? But, we weren’t, and Mississippi State took full advantage of that. They came in here and punched us in the mouth and kept punching us, and we were running around trying to figure it out.

“Sometimes things linger too long, both good and bad, and you’re not focused on the things at hand because you are thinking too much about what happened the previous week or maybe earlier than that,” added Brooks, who’s coached 40-plus years, at all levels – high school, college and the NFL.

“It’s difficult and has always been a challenge, but particularly when you’re dealing with young people who have a lot more going on in their life than football,” the coach said.

“This IS my life. I have no life right now other than football. But they do. They have a social life, they have an academic life, they have a family life. They have things going on, and they have people close talking to them. You never know where their frame of mind is totally. But it’s my job to get them focused, and I’ve got to do a better job of it. It’s more difficult than it used to be.”

Brooks, a 1963 graduate of Oregon State University, then took a long pause, and quipped: “I know their social life is a lot better than mine was when I was in college.”

Brooks reached out to his players when the downtrodden lot gathered for a Sunday practice this weekend.

“I told them Sunday that I’m trying to do the things I can to point out to them things that are extremely important, but I need some help, and I need some help from the players on the team to also be talking about focusing and getting ready instead of just going on with their lives,” Brooks said.