For me when I look back over the season I try to analyze what or better why did Kentucky fail to make a bowl game for the second year in a row when it seemed as if everything was in place for us to achieve our goal. In 2014 by the middle of the season we were one victory away from a bowl game and yet we could not win that sixth game. To be fair the team was very young or at least the bulk of our talent was young. It is true we had Bud and Z two Sr. defensive players that were supremely gifted but most of our talented two-deep players were young, very young. That resulted in a team that was used up during our brutal SEC grind. We still had the UL game and a week off to prepare for it. That game got away from us because the oppurtunity arose to make the game winning plays and we just did not make them. Maybe a seed of doubt was planted in that game.
In 2015 hope and justifiable expectations flourished pre-season. Most fans felt we had a QB who like Andre Woodson would mature into the all-SEC QB. We were giddy with expectations when Patrick Towles said on the Finebaum show he was going to lead Kentucky to the SEC East championship. Fans could look at our schedule and imagine that actually happening. It was a much better schedule for us it appeared, a schedule where we played 8 out of the 12 games in our house. We would actually get to play Florida in our house a year after scoring 30 points on them in the swamp and felt the game had been allowed to go longer than the clock said it should. Third game of the year and we would end that last horrid streak at 28! It was easy to believe from there we would march on to a bowl maybe even a bowl in the new year or at least a warm holiday festival.
ALAS Something went wrong. AGAIN.
We had everything we needed or so we thought to win respect again. We had Mature QB, two proven running backs, a stable of gifted WR's, a improved OL, a improving defense. We seem to have forgotten our biggest concern pre-season was the quality of our CB's. We were very worried about that position, a position that later proved to be much stronger than we feared.
Something happened to this team this season that stopped it's progression cold in its tracks. We were not as good as we were a year before when we struggled against a brutal schedule to finish 5-7, the very same 5-7 record we accomplished this year with a much easier schedule and a more mature team. Something happened to this team, not to the roster, that actually should have proven to be stronger. No something happened to this teams psyche. The unity that is need for every team of any sort was not there to provide the bond between all the separate pieces of this team. This team did not show any of the love and character for each other that Calipari is constantly harping about. Remember when Cal was telling all his players they should read The Energy Bus? That book is all about team unity and positive energy and that is the very thing the Kentucky football team seemed to be completely lacking in.
Whatever happened to drive the one or the many wedges that drove this team apart, I surely hope it can be healed during the off-season and that Coach Stoops can get beyond "grueling" remedies and find some psychic salve to repair the fissure that resulted in a broken team.
In 2015 hope and justifiable expectations flourished pre-season. Most fans felt we had a QB who like Andre Woodson would mature into the all-SEC QB. We were giddy with expectations when Patrick Towles said on the Finebaum show he was going to lead Kentucky to the SEC East championship. Fans could look at our schedule and imagine that actually happening. It was a much better schedule for us it appeared, a schedule where we played 8 out of the 12 games in our house. We would actually get to play Florida in our house a year after scoring 30 points on them in the swamp and felt the game had been allowed to go longer than the clock said it should. Third game of the year and we would end that last horrid streak at 28! It was easy to believe from there we would march on to a bowl maybe even a bowl in the new year or at least a warm holiday festival.
ALAS Something went wrong. AGAIN.
We had everything we needed or so we thought to win respect again. We had Mature QB, two proven running backs, a stable of gifted WR's, a improved OL, a improving defense. We seem to have forgotten our biggest concern pre-season was the quality of our CB's. We were very worried about that position, a position that later proved to be much stronger than we feared.
Something happened to this team this season that stopped it's progression cold in its tracks. We were not as good as we were a year before when we struggled against a brutal schedule to finish 5-7, the very same 5-7 record we accomplished this year with a much easier schedule and a more mature team. Something happened to this team, not to the roster, that actually should have proven to be stronger. No something happened to this teams psyche. The unity that is need for every team of any sort was not there to provide the bond between all the separate pieces of this team. This team did not show any of the love and character for each other that Calipari is constantly harping about. Remember when Cal was telling all his players they should read The Energy Bus? That book is all about team unity and positive energy and that is the very thing the Kentucky football team seemed to be completely lacking in.
Whatever happened to drive the one or the many wedges that drove this team apart, I surely hope it can be healed during the off-season and that Coach Stoops can get beyond "grueling" remedies and find some psychic salve to repair the fissure that resulted in a broken team.
