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By: LONNY DEMAREE
It’s been a short two months since the Florida Citrus Bowl that was just renamed to the Overton’s Citrus Bowl. Why is this important to the Kentucky fan? They need to know in advance of where they would like to be again and likewise their sponsor having witnessed the BBN turnout.
It seems like every spring the UK football team is said to be coming upon a key period in their coming success in the fall. In most cases in pass years nothing changed. Since the hiring of Coach Mark Stoops he has been fighting the culture war for the Wildcat football program. Each of the last three years the team has gotten better and in 2018 it reached a crescendo when they won ten games. Locally Mark Stoops seems to have cracked that glass ceiling of the culture war. Being at a level in the program to be able to sustain that mark and will crack through the national ambivalence ceiling.
The local hard-shells have held a belief that UK couldn’t and shouldn’t have high expectations in both of the major sports. Now is the time for Stoops to crack through that ceiling. There has to be confidence in the head coach and his staff as well as the players they are coaching. By being voted Coach of the Year in the SEC and gaining national prominence Stoops has now entered into that fraternity. That’s obvious because now everywhere you see the coach there’s a radiance of success coming from him. He sees no less than six and possibly eight players drafted off his 2018 team.
Needless to say he has a job ahead of him this spring, summer, and fall filling in the holes on the team manned by mostly seniors. The team loses the entire secondary and a couple of high volume linebackers. The Wildcats just officially hire former UK player Jon Sumrall away from Ole Miss to help to sustain that level. Obviously in every hire recruiting is important. The Rebels upped the ante in an attempt to keep Sumrall.
On a recent radio talk show C.J. Conrad was almost giddy about the prospect for the 2019 addition of the Wildcat football team. Like any receiver they want more balls thrown their way and Conrad caught thirty and he would have liked to have caught more. But Eddie Gran the craftsman of the offense obviously knew how to get to ten wins. This was simply amazing having averaged only 26.6 points a game. The University of Georgia Bulldogs came after Gran with no success.
“I expect huge things out of quarterback Terry Wilson,” Conrad said who strongly believes that per game offensive number will increase exponentially. “We’ve not seen the best of Wilson. I think he’s going to be one of the best quarterbacks in the SEC this year. He’ just scratching the surface.” His 67.2 percent completion rate was the second single season best in UK history. “I’m really pumped for Terry (Wilson).” Conrad continued. “I think he has a huge ceiling. The dude is extremely athletic.
The numbers game is important to burn in your memory for the future – numbers 1, 10, 3, 31, 4, 9, 82, 14, 83. These are the core of the next winning team that we will be reporting on as spring practice progresses.
There’s a country and western song “Wolverton Mountain” that’s a play on words but fits where the Cats will once again be attempting to climb the Overton Citrus Bowl. The Cats have one piece of that solved in the leadership department solved. Kash Daniel a leader extraordinaire much in the same vein of Ray Lewis the former fiery leader the Baltimore Ravens. Stay tuned.
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