Kentucky moves up in latest poll, but coach expects more from Cats in coming weeks

Kentucky ended a losing streak and made a jump in the rankings after the victory over Middle Tennessee on Saturday.

The Cats moved up three spots to No. 17 in the Associated Press poll released on Sunday afternoon.

The victory over the Blue Raiders on Saturday made this group of Cats among the most successful in school history. Since 1957, just four UK teams have won eight regular-season games.

Kentucky (8-3) has one more game in the regular season at Louisville (2-9) on Saturday night to move to nine wins.

There’s still much work to be done, Coach Mark Stoops said after Saturday’s victory. He wants to see the Cats put together a complete game on both sides of the ball.

While getting to eight wins made him feel good, there’s still more to do.

“I’m just like the fans, I’m mad about the ones that we let get away,” Stoops said. “I want to continue to work and we’re not going to sit at the table of success very long, we’re not very good when we do that as a team.

“We can’t, we just can’t stay satisfied and our team doesn’t play good that way and we need to have an edge about us here this week. And we got to go play a rival and they’re not having a great season, but they have nothing to lose and I’m sure they’re going to play very, very tough and hard against us.”

In the Amway coaches’ poll, Kentucky moved up to No. 18, a three-spot gain. The College Football Playoff rankings, which are released on Tuesday night, had UK at No. 17 last week and the Cats likely will move up in that as well.

This story was originally published November 18, 2018 at 2:09 PM.