LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- It's a little easier sell this week. Mark Stoops says Kentucky is getting better. They're stacking small wins. They're finding continuity. They're steady in their approach.
It's easier because on Saturday, they stacked an actual victory. An SEC win. At Auburn. A one-win stack.
Cue the trumpets. Add some "road trip" guitar music. Check the GPS. Could the Wildcats be turning a corner?
Forgive the real Big Blue faithful if they don't start sprinting into traffic.
Louisville | Kentucky | Indiana | Eric Crawford
If Kentucky football has taught fans anything over the decades, it's that corners are tricky. You turn one and find another. You straighten out and get blindsided by a fourth-down failure or a long LSU pass.
And sometimes, fans of Kentucky football and Charlie Brown know well, when you're just about to run through the tunnel to glory, Lucy pulls the football away.
She's teeing it up again this week. Saturday. Kroger Field. Kentucky vs. Florida. The Gators are 3-point favorites. The crowd will be ready. Kentucky is coming off its first SEC win in 11 tries and now faces something even more dangerous than a hostile road crowd.
Hope.
You remember hope. It's that helium balloon with a slow leak. It's the stuff that kills you, according to Ted Lasso scripts.
It's what happens after Cutter Boley throws 11 straight completions. After the linebackers tear through Auburn's front like they know the snap count. After Cam Miller punches the football loose and Stoops, finally, gives someone a game ball.
It's what follows a good flight home and a Monday press conference that produces more smiles than stress.
The coach even joked about standing on the interview desk like Craig Skinner, Kentucky's volleyball boss, did in his own presser just before Stoops walked in. Look, Skinner has won a national title, just beat Texas and is ranked No. 2 in the country.
He can have the desk, not just stand on it.
Stoops didn't repeat Skinner's gymnastics, of course. But after the way this season has gone, even joking about elevation is a step in the right direction.
"I was proud of our guys," Stoops said. "For us, it's about continuing to build on the good things we've done. I know we've fallen short at times, and there've been other times when we played very good in spurts. … We've been getting better, doing some good things, and hopefully we'll build on that."
Nobody knows what any of this means, for Stoops or Kentucky. What happens Saturday against Florida will provide another piece to the puzzle. Florida has already fired Billy Napier. Auburn, who lost to Kentucky Saturday, just fired Hugh Freeze.
Right now, Stoops is the last man standing in the latest season of SEC Hot Seat. He's stepping over bodies right and left. And he can keep doing that if his team can fashions a second-half revival. The Wildcats have a Florida team they should be motivated to beat, to end a home-field SEC losing streak.
Then they get an unbeaten but outmanned Tennessee Tech team, before traveling to Vanderbilt, which once was a nice trip to Nashville for a good lunch, and now looks more forbidding.
They end the season at Louisville.
Call me crazy, but if Kentucky's trajectory is upward, a bowl bid should be very much in play on that rivalry weekend.
Stoops didn't say any of that Monday. He didn't talk about being back or having arrived. He just talked about a group that is "steady in their approach."
You'll forgive Kentucky fans if they want to wait a week before they approach anything steadily. Because sometimes the corner that has been turned wasn't a corner at all, just a long, looping roundabout with a pothole at the end.
Still, there's something tangible here. The special teams dominance. The defensive resolve. The young guys producing. Stoops didn't downplay Florida's weapons — DJ Lagway can fling it, and the Gators have more speed than a Daytona straightaway — but he also hasn't been bluffing about his own team's improvement.
Now they will search for something that has been elusive lately. Momentum.
"Absolutely, you hope for that," Stoops said. "You see the payoff, the dividends for the hard work with a win. Some of those hard losses we have, yes, they hurt, because the guys invest so much. They work, they know they're close, they know they're getting better, but they're not seeing the end result. To see the end result here, you hope it catapults you."
Is Kentucky getting better? Well, they're sure not getting any worse. Still, it's difficult to get the memory of that late Boley interception that could've easily turned into a heartbreaking loss at Auburn out of your memory.
Winning, and defense, cover a multitude of sins.
But here comes Lucy to hold. Hope is on the tee again.
Do you swing for it? Or wait for someone to pull it away?
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