Cats better prepared thanks to improved recruiting, training and depth
When Mark Stoops took over Kentucky's football program in late 2012 he inherited a roster that was light on talent and even lighter on depth.
Fast-forward nearly five years and improved recruiting, development and strength training have created more of a battle-ready, battle-tested team.
Last year Kentucky found a way to win games late when they hadn't always done that before.
Yes, there were late wins, such as against South Carolina in 2014. The team started 5-1 and 4-2 in 2014 and 2015, but neither of those teams finished their respective seasons with more than five wins.
Mark Stoops' mantra heading into the 2015 season was "finish."
The only problem: He didn't quite have the horses.
Last year persistence, and time, paid off. Kentucky beat Mississippi State on a late field goal. The Cats made the plays down the stretch to beat Louisville. It would be foolish to imagine Kentucky's strength and conditioning program didn't have a lot to do with improved results, especially when the team was so much better equipped to make winning plays late in games.
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"We are always blamed when things go wrong," UK's head strength and conditioning coach Corey Edmond told CatsIllustrated.com this week. "When things go right we never get the credit."
Then he used a buzzword that's one of Stoops' favorites: Capacity. The strength program has a lot to do with building that capacity. How much can the team handle?
Edmond said Kentucky's team, now more than any point in recent memory, has built a capacity "to be able to play in the SEC."
"That's something people can't understand coming from other sports," Edmond said, explaining the rigors of the week-by-week grind that is football in the Southeastern Conference. "You have to build a capacity to play game after game in this conference."
A lot of that is doing the right work in the strength program. But a lot of it is your team gaining more physical maturity that only comes with experience and age.
Early in Stoops' tenure the Cats relied very heavily upon young talent at key positions.
"That's why you see freshmen, sometimes, start out early and win five straight games. Then you see decline," Edmond said. "It has nothing to do with whether they're strong, fast or talented enough. You play a lot of freshmen, they're going to hit a wall about that seventh game. You have to prepare in such a way that you don't do that. We have to bring them along slowly. People don't understand that."
Edmond said getting players more time in the strength program is one component of that. Another big part is letting players get more extensive reps in practice. But there's no substitute for game reps that only come with experience and playing time against SEC competition.
"It's more than just us in the strength program," he said. "It's building game reps."
Game reps, experience and age all play big roles, but Edmond acknowledges that recruiting is where it starts. He plays a significant role in helping the coaching staff during the recruiting process. Because he'll be working with players day in, day out for most of the year, the staff looks to Edmond and Mark Hill as valuable resources and knowledge centers when it comes to evaluation. When a player visits campus, it's common for the strength coaches to chip in with their input.
Is he big enough? Can he get big enough? What's he's going to look like years from now?
"When we see players they bring to campus, who better to know what they can do with their bodies?" Edmond asked. "We do enough film study to see a guy running, his foot speed, how fast he can get."
It would be counterintuitive not to get input from the strength coach when it comes to projecting how a player might develop, Edmond said. Can a player develop? Or has "this guy reached his ceiling?" he says.
"It's smart of Brez (Dan Berezowitz) to be able to (ask Edmond)," the head strength coach told CatsIllustrated.com. "I appreciate him doing that. We've seen the best at every position. We've trained the best at every position. We have a unique perspective more than a coach has."
That comes, Edmond said, from spending an enormous amount of time with players. Not just in practice, but for countless more hours in the weight room and around the football facilities.
Because they do so much homework and spend so much time around players, preparing workout plans and fine-tuning what they're capable of, Mark Hill says he and Edmond are never surprised when a player exceeds expectations that outsiders have set for them.
"We don't approach programming exercises so that we would say, 'Hopefully this guy gets stronger,' or, 'Hopefully this guy gets faster.' We build and structure every program so guys will improve," Hill said. "We put together a program for guys to succeed. In that manner we're not surprised, in no way, shape or form, if a guy gets better. We structure the program for that."
Hill pointed out that he and Edmond share close to a combined 40 years of experience in strength training, so they're confident in the product they will produce ... if players put in the work.
"If a guy doesn't get better there's something in his life that he's not doing," Hill said.
Making good athletes better athletes is what Edmond and Hill do. But they're up front about the fact that recruiting the best of the best makes them look better.
“Great athletes make you a great strength coach,” Edmond said. “If you have a great mold to build from you’re going to look very good being a strength coach.”
