A Super Talk Mississippi Media Production.

Kentucky is who's on base today for the SEC preview.

Joining me now on the Welcome Home Beef Hotline,

John Hale covers the Wildcats for the Louisville Courier Journal.

Great reporter, not a fan of the Champions of Europe,

much to his dismay, I'm sure.

John, Kentucky has sort of turned a corner for me in terms of expectation.

And what I mean by that is two years ago, if you say, okay, Kentucky's going to go three and nine,

I'm not completely surprised by that.

Now I would be really surprised if Kentucky is not a bowl team and possibly a lot better than that.

Is it the same way in Kentucky?

Have fans reached a level of expectation of winning?

Yeah, definitely.

I mean, it's obviously not in Alabama.

It's not at LSU and Auburn and Georgia, anything like that.

But they've certainly reached the point in the program where Rich Brooks had it,

what, 10 or 15 years ago, where they were expecting to go to a bowl game every season, the winner six or seven games, you get to a mid-to-low level bowl game and go from there. The question becomes, can you take it to another level? And Mark Stoop, so far as has shown the signs that that might be possible, where you can have this baseline of having a winning record every season, and then maybe every three or four years you have a bunch of veterans. You have some things go your way and you could make a run at the East. They did that a few years ago with Josh Allen and Benis-Snell and all those guys won 10 games for the first time in 40 years in the program, had a winner-take-all game for the East against Georgia that they lost. But now can you do that consistently?

And I think what happens this year is going to say a lot about that because they've got

holes to fill, but they have a lot of talent coming back.

They've gotten to a point where you feel good about kind of plugging and playing

and filling those holes with guys who are even higher-ranked recruits in the players

they're replacing.

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