After back-to-back wins, Mitch Barnhart pleased with progress from UK football
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Barnhart credits locker-room leadership and competitive fire after wins
- Kentucky recovered from losses to beat Auburn and Florida, regain momentum
- Barnhart leaves Stoops’ status open while emphasizing postseason and progress
Count UK athletics director Mitch Barnhart among the group impressed by the resolve shown by the Kentucky football program this season.
“I think it speaks to the leadership in the locker room,” he said Tuesday morning after the latest Champions Blue board of governors meeting. “...I think, in today’s environment, that’s hard sometimes to find folks that that competitive fire burns and it stays strong. It’s a really good group, and they’re young, and they’re learning.
“Obviously, we got a lot of young guys that are playing some positions. Saturday was really unique. And then we lost some veteran guys (to injury) out there early on in that game, and we had young guys stepping up all over the field and performing incredibly high level and making plays. That is exciting. It shows the competitive fire that they have. That’s hard. It’s a new environment that we’re in in college athletics. I wonder how difficult it is to maintain teams that want to hang in there and keep working. And I’m proud of our team for doing that.”
The situation looked bleak for the team and UK coach Mark Stoops less than a month ago after a 56-34 home loss to Tennessee that extended the program’s losing streak against power-conference competition to 11 games. The offense seemed to be steadily improving, but the defensive collapse against Tennessee torched any optimism that the Wildcats could build on a strong showing in an overtime loss to Texas the week before.
Kentucky’s players did not fold, though.
The team won an SEC game for the first time in more than a year with a 10-3 victory at Auburn. The next week, UK beat a power conference opponent at home for the first time in more than two years with a 38-7 blowout of Florida.
In the process, Stoops joined Bear Bryant as just the second UK coach to ever beat Florida five times.
Barnhart was on the field for the celebrations after both games. SEC Network cameras caught a particularly emotional embrace between Barnhart and Stoops after the Auburn win.
“Really happy for our team and our coaches, our fans,” Barnhart said. “We had a tough stretch where we were having a hard time finding results that everyone wanted. … I mean, it was nice to find some joy, to be bluntly honest with you. It’s fun to have joy for our fans and for our team.”
The fact that Auburn fired its coach the day after losing to Kentucky and Florida had already fired its coach before the game may have reduced the excitement of the victories for some fans, but Kentucky is now within reach of a ninth bowl appearance in the past 10 years.
If the Wildcats take care of business against FCS Tennessee Tech on Saturday, they would need to upset one of Vanderbilt or Louisville in the final two games to reach six wins and bowl eligibility. Both opponents figure to be favored over Kentucky considering they’ve spent much of the season ranked in the top 25, but both teams looked more vulnerable over the weekend as Vanderbilt needed overtime to beat Auburn and Louisville lost to Cal.
“Postseason play is the goal in our program, all of our programs,” Barnhart said. “That’s not just unique to football. We do that in every sport. We talk about that all the time. … We want to make sure we get back to that and experience that again, and begin to grow into that feeling of what does it look like to take a look and find your way in a (playoff) conversation and those kind of things for other postseason opportunities. When you struggle a bit, you’re working your way back up the mountain, you take steps. And we’re taking steps. We just want to continue to take steps.”
Even if Kentucky beats Tennessee Tech, losses to Vanderbilt and Louisville to close the season would erase much of the positive momentum built the past two weeks. It should come as no surprise then that Barnhart did not commit fully to Stoops’ return next season, leaving open the possibility that one or both parties decide a fresh start is best.
“It’s a decade-plus (Stoops) and I have been together,” Barnhart said. “We’ve journeyed this thing before, and we’ve been together a long time. He loves Kentucky, and we love him. And we just want to keep making progress and doing what we’re doing. We always sit down at the end of the year, like we always do, and sit there and say, ‘Hey, where are we? What are you thinking? What are we thinking?’ And we’ll always get to this spot. You know I do that at the end of the year. So that won’t change.”