The 2024 Kentucky football season is over, and it ended with a whimper.

The Wildcats (4-8 overall and 1-7 in SEC play) lost the annual Governor’s Cup rivalry game to Louisville (8-4 overall and 5-3 in the ACC) 41-14 on Saturday afternoon at Kroger Field in Lexington.

UK trailed 20-0 at halftime and failed to get sufficient offensive production with true freshman quarterback Cutter Boley making his first career start.

UK turned the ball over five times against Louisville, losing two fumbles and tossing three interceptions. Two of these interceptions were thrown by Boley, who was knocked out of the game in the third quarter after being on the receiving end of a hit deemed to be targeting.

Kentucky receiver Ja’Mori Maclin finished with three catches for 121 receiving yards and two touchdowns, a small bright spot in an otherwise dismal offensive performance by the Wildcats. Across Kentucky’s 12 games this season, UK managed to score 21-plus points on only three occasions — against Southern Miss, Ohio and FCS opponent Murray State.

Louisville’s victory snaps a five-game Kentucky winning streak in the Governor’s Cup rivalry series. It also marks the Cardinals’ first defeat of the Cats since 2017.

Afterward, UK football coach Mark Stoops met with media members to recap the defeat, and an overall disappointing season for his Kentucky team.

Here’s everything that Stoops said.

Opening statement.

OK. The end of a very tough and difficult season. Give Louisville credit, I knew going into it that they had a very good team. You know, that was I’m sure very motivating to come in and play very well, and they did. You can tell it’s a veteran team led by a very experienced seventh year quarterback that managed the game very well. I thought Jeff and their staff did a very nice job keeping us off balance very multiple in the run game. You could see that very evident by the stats. You know, kept us off balance and mixed it up and did a very nice job against us. You know, for us, the start was very hurtful to get a drive going, to get some runs of our own, to get some momentum and to get some field position and put the ball on the ground.

You know, you are not going to beat good teams that way. With all of the turnovers that we had, you know, we didn’t give ourselves a good shot. With that, I think it takes a little bit of the hope away late, we get the game to 20-7, we get a little bit of momentum and get a little hope and it goes away quickly with another turnover. So, you just can’t do that. You can’t do that in any game, let alone a rivalry game.

Give them credit. It’s been a long time. We’ve been on the right side of that for many years and we know what it feels like to be the right side of it. We know now for the first time in a long time what it is like to be on the wrong side of it. It’s not very much fun. I know the year was very frustrating to a lot of people, you know, to our fan base, they were wonderful and stuck with us the entire year. Once again, out there today. Sorry we did not deliver a better performance today and throughout the season.

I told the team how much I appreciated the guys, that that was their last game and what they done for this place whether it was a short amount of time or many years, like some of those guys. I just greatly appreciate them. The players that are returning, if they do return, because we’ve got a lot of meetings to have this week and organize what our plan is moving forward. But, you know, we’ve got to go back to work, we’ve got to go back to being who we are and be very tough and be very disciplined and very fundamental and we were not always that this year. You know, it wasn’t very good, I understand that and it’s very frustrating, I understand that and I accept the responsibility of that. You know, we’ve done good things in the past and we know how to do it.

I feel like we have a good plan to move forward here and there will be a lot of moving pieces in the next two, three, four weeks and we will get it fixed. That excites me and motivates me and with that, now I will open it up for questions.

Question about Kentucky making a lot of mistakes against Louisville.

Yeah, I don’t think it takes — it doesn’t diminish anything because we feel like there is some very good young talent there. It obviously needs to be blended with other great players. You know, there is not any one person that can make a massive difference. Some of our deficiencies showed up again today. In a minute you get something going and we give up a sack or the turnovers, as I mentioned.

We feel like there is really good pieces in place and let’s be honest, we’ve seen teams do that, right? I just caught the end of one team in there that didn’t go to a bowl game last year that just finished with nine wins in our league. So, you have to make sure that you have the resources to move forward in this landscape to really make a big jump and I really feel like that’s in place.

So, we worked hard to get some things and pieces in place to build a very good football team.

Question about how Kentucky brings in the right new players.

Well, it is not much different anywhere. The turnover is real, right? And as I said a couple of weeks ago, and again, I think you guys have done the research but I think the number one team in the country has 14 portal players, right? They recruit pretty well. Not every team needs to have massive turnover, some of them do. Ole Miss put together a heck of a football team with a lot of turnover.

I think the norm, the normal team these days are going to turn over 35, 40, over 40. That is different. You know, it’s different everywhere. It’s going to be most definitely different. Is there things we can do better in that area? Absolutely. I didn’t think or ever say that was portal or perfect or the end-all be-all. I said that last time, it’s not end-all be-all. You have to have a strong nucleus of some good players and then supplement it. But it is everywhere. It is every program.

Question about Kentucky football’s culture.

Well, I think that this year, you know, we didn’t do a good enough job in any area. There’s just no way around it. We failed in that area. We didn’t have the discipline that we needed. We didn’t play as good as we needed to. There’s, every level needs to improve and accountability needs to happen. Again, I’ve mentioned it and I think you’ve seen that throughout the SEC, the difficulty of constantly thinking you’re going to go to a bowl game every year, again, I think it is three of 16 teams that have gone to eight straight so we have been pretty consistent.

To that, I will defend. This year, there is no defense on that. You know, I agree with you, it’s just not good enough. You know, it’s not like we know how to do it. We’ve got to have good players; we’ve got to have good coaches. We’ve got to all do our part. That part excites me.

Question about how Mark Stoops will sell the UK program to players who want to stay.

We will cross that bridge when it comes. I told them that if they stay here they’d better be ready to go to work. You know, to fix that culture that we are talking about and make sure that we get back to being who we are. That is a tough disciplined football team.

That’s the first message. If they don’t want to do those things, then don’t come back here.

Question about how UK can keep its best players accountable while also having to convince them to stay.

It’s not hard to keep them accountable. They stay here, if they want to be here they are going to be here. Listen, there’s going to be some change and there needs to be some change, clearly. Again, we will go through that at the proper time.

Question about UK’s quarterback position.

Well, I have a lot of confidence in Cutter. We’ve got to make sure we build a very good team around him. We have to make sure that we have strong competition. Gavin really stepped in there today and looked very impressive at times. I feel good about that.

Question about Brock Vandagriff’s future at UK.

I will let Brock discuss that. He and I have had our conversations and it’s not for me to talk to you about what Brock wants to do.

Question about how Kentucky football can get back to fighting back and responding against opponents.

Yeah, we’ve got to be better. We’ve got to be better. Today is another one where we get it and we come in here and it’s 20 to nothing at the half and we get three and out to start the second half and we go score and get some momentum and then fumble it, you can’t do that.

You need to be a better football team, you know, you just have to be better.

Question about what went wrong with UK’s run defense this year.

Especially today. I thought today they did a really nice job in the multiple in the run game. We didn’t do very good at support, just crack replacing, you know, make the corners tackle sometimes, cutting out our safeties once in a while. Late in the game we moved a little bit trying to create a negative yards play and one D-lineman goes too far, it looks horrible and they are running the ball.

The coach did that because earlier they captured the edge on us a little bit and got an 8 yard run. We solidified the edges and moved inside and overrun it. Bottom line, it looks worse than it is and it was by no means very good at times. But that one just got out and we didn’t play it very good.

Question about Mark Stoops’ message to UK fans.

Yeah, I understand the frustrations completely. We are not very happy as well. I can promise you that we are going to get back to work and get it fixed. The misery index goes around, you know, it goes around. For myself, I’ve been around a long time and I’m really concerned and concentrated and excited about the rebuild.

Fans got to wait a long time. I get to go to work tomorrow and for that I understand it and accept it and can promise you we will go to work to get the team back to being a team they can be very proud of.

Question about how this Kentucky football rebuild differs from the first that Mark Stoops oversaw.

Yeah, you know, getting it on track when I first got here, you couldn’t turn the roster over like this. I mean, you could only sign 25 guys per year. Much more difficult and I don’t feel like, the record is what it is and I know we did not play acceptable football at times, I get that. But again, you’ve seen it. I just caught the end of a game in there and Mitch and I were talking and I caught the end of an SEC team that didn’t go to a bowl game a year ago, just one nine.

You know, it can happen. You just have to make sure that you keep the right pieces in place and you keep the foundation that’s there and go back to work. We are not nearly as far off as we were when I walked in the door here, that’s for sure.

Question about what changes will occur going forward for the Kentucky football program.

There may be some organically and guys that get opportunities and we will see where that goes and what happens. I think consistency, I definitely need. We’ve had great consistency on the defensive side of the ball and it kind of shows. Obviously, that’s my background. Offensively I think it’s relatively important. There is people, if you watch college football, if you watch other teams and you see the consistency year to year you can see them getting better.

I think I’m excited to keep that continuity and it better. I watched some of the Georgia-Georgia Tech game last night and I watched Georgia Tech’s team improve in year two. Offensively, in particular, looked really good and that kind of excited me. We’ve got to have some continuity. We haven’t had any continuity on the offensive side in a long time. And that’s hurt us, it’s caught up to us. That excites me to get back to work on that.

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