Mark Stoops addresses how he reacts to outside noise, criticism surrounding him

Mark Stoops is seeing more criticism this season, including from his own fanbase in the bluegrass. Even so, he’s not at all concerned by it.

Stoops addressed the recent disapproval around him at his press conference on Monday. With that, he said that he won’t shrink based on some of those opinions and knows that whoever asked that question knows that he wouldn’t either.

“The outside noise? I can’t bother myself zero with that, you know what I mean?” Stoops said.

“I think you’ve been around here a long time…I think you know that, you know,” said Stoops. “I’m not going to sit up here and flinch.”

In Stoops’ dozenth season, Kentucky is facing one of their worst finishes in some time under him. They currently sit at 3-4 overall, including 1-4 in conference play with a 26-point loss to South Carolina, a loss to Vanderbilt, and a 28-point loss at Florida.

That’s obviously bad for several reasons at UK. For one, it looks to be a regression for the program, especially with who they’ve lost to, after making eight consecutive bowl games. For two, fan support has started to struggled with three of their four losses this having come at home as part of them having losing double-digit games over their last dozen or so at Kroger Field. Finally, for three, it’s not getting any easier with another toss-up game that they’ll host this weekend before games against good-to-great competition at Tennessee, at Texas, and then Louisville in The Governor’s Cup.

All that has the Wildcats in a position where they could finish with less than six wins for the first time since 2020 and for the first time in a full season since 2015. Big Blue Nation would find that discouraging either way but certainly so with the expectations for this roster prior to kickoff.

Still, Stoops is going to continue on this season to finish it as best as he can. That’s all he can do as Kentucky tries to get back to a bowl berth at or above .500.

“You could face a bad day in tough times with a good attitude, you know. That’s what I’ll do,” said Stoops. “We’ll go to work.”

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