Kentucky learned from last year’s bowl loss. See what it’s doing different this time.

It seems so obvious when Dean Hood says it.

“You know, this is a reward for a good season: To be in a bowl,” the Kentucky special teams coach said.

But in some ways, the 15 extra practices after a long regular season, weaved into final exams and holidays, can turn into a grind.

That’s probably more true this season than most since new practice rules allowed teams to start their preseason work even earlier than in past years.

“If you go crazy and have 17 practices, it turns into a grind and almost seems like a punishment,” Hood said of bowl workouts. “It’s almost like an extra spring ball, but at the same time you don’t want to make it seem like a punishment.”

That seems to be Coach Mark Stoops’ philosophy this season as Kentucky prepares for the Music City Bowl on Dec. 29.

“Last year we overdid it a little bit, worked ourselves a lot, did a lot,” running back Benny Snell said of the change of pace for this bowl compared to the TaxSlayer Bowl a season ago.

“This year coming into it, Stoops told us things will be a lot more shorter, lighter, but we’ll get good reps.”

Players are mostly off this week while taking final exams, but the two bowl practices the Cats have had so far have been considerably shorter and more enjoyable, they said.

“The tempo’s much higher and it’s just getting back out there and playing some football and having some fun doing it,” Stoops said of the recent bowl practices. “So that’s been really good.”

There’s been no talk about Northwestern yet, just a lot of practicing offense against defense, getting more reps for second- and third-team players.

There’s been no new installation, nothing too mentally taxing as UK gets back to football after nearly two weeks away.

“Not as much time, but faster, more energy and reps really quick,” offensive coordinator Eddie Gran summarized after Friday’s practice. “Today was unbelievable. We had a couple periods today where we actually went back to the top and kept running plays because we were two minutes ahead of schedule.

“It’s going to be, ‘Let’s get out there, let’s get our work done, and then get off our feet.’”

After the second practice Saturday, the Cats’ defensive coordinator had a similar take.

“It was a real quick, high intensity practice,” Matt House said. “Coach got exactly what he wanted: They were moving. They were popping around. There was good energy. It was competitive. But we weren’t out there kind of dragging along.”

Coaches always are looking for ways to change things up, especially after not having last year’s postseason go the way the Cats wanted, falling to Georgia Tech 33-18 in Jacksonville, Fla.

“There’s a fine line there with the players as well of using it like we needed to a year ago: to really just push the program and use it as basically another spring practice and develop guys,” Stoops said on his radio show after the Louisville game.

“There’s such benefit to that, but there’s also the balance of the morale of the football team and what you’re doing with them. So, how hard you practice, how long, how many practices.”

Kentucky will focus more on getting better fundamentally, especially in areas where it struggled down the stretch like run defense, giving up a combined 727 rushing yards and eight touchdowns on the ground to Georgia and Louisville to close out the regular season.

Opponent prep for Northwestern (which runs a much more traditional offense than Georgia Tech did a season ago) will begin later this week.

Stoops said: “We definitely will change a bit and try to get more out of this bowl practice and I felt like it obviously helped us a year ago, but we definitely need to change it up.”

This story was originally published December 12, 2017 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Kentucky learned from last year’s bowl loss. See what it’s doing different this time.."