Wildcats, Stein have impressed Peach Bowl president
Published 8:00 am Wednesday, November 4, 2026
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What Kentucky and coach Will Stein have done this year has not stunned Peach Bowl president David Epps.
(VICKY GRAFF)
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Kentucky women’s basketball coach Kenny Brooks has opted not to recruit any high school players for next season in hopes of retaining the players he already has.
(VICKY GRAFF)
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College basketball analyst Jimmy Dykes believes Milan Momcilovic’s skills make every Kentucky player better.
(VICKY GRAFF)
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Morgan Gaerte believes consecutive losses will be a “turning point” for Kentucky’s volleyball season.
(VICKY GRAFF)
Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl president/CEO David Epps was at the Southeastern Conference spring meetings in Destin, Florida, when he met new Kentucky football coach Will Stein for the first time.
“I was impressed immediately. I didn’t know him and his history, but there was just an aura about him and his vision for the season that I filed away,” Epps said. “I started seeing how his team had developed a personality of toughness and ability to win close games.”
That ability has No. 7 Kentucky 7-1 overall and 5-1 in SEC play going into Saturday night’s game at No. 16 Tennessee. The Cats are tied for the SEC lead with Georgia and Epps is watching because the Peach Bowl in Atlanta hosts a college football playoff quarterfinal game.
Kentucky has not played in the Peach Bowl since 1993 when it lost 14-13 to Clemson. Kentucky’s other Peach Bowl appearance was in 1976 when it beat North Carolina 21-0 with a massive turnout of UK fans in Cat-lanta.
“We love to see teams nobody expects to have breakout seasons have those special seasons and in the age of NIL and with what Indiana has done nothing should stun anybody,” Epps said. “I always tell people I am a fan first and the first filter I look through is as a fan and the unpredictability of college football this year has been great. It’s why we love the game.
“The exciting thing to me is that you sort of expected teams with the biggest NIL budgets … to be running away and distinguishing themselves (above) everyone else, but it has not been that way and to me that is the story of the season. I expected less parity to be honest with NIL, but we have more parity and Kentucky is a big part of that this year.”
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Epps knows Saturday night’s game in Knoxville is “pivotal” for teams’ playoff chances.
“Tennessee has shown the ability to beat really good opponents, but has also shown it can be vulnerable. A win puts Kentucky in the driver’s seat for the SEC championship game. That is a big one. Tennessee is dangerous and has a lot of talent, but if you project forward if Kentucky wins and remains one of only two one-loss teams in the conference it sets them up for a great finish.
“We obviously do not get to pick teams that play in our bowl now, but if Kentucky finishes the year as strongly as it has played so far just remember that the top seeds get to pick where they play in the quarterfinals so there could be a decent possibility Kentucky could be coming to Cat-lanta.”
Epps said “nobody” in the southeast would not love having Kentucky in its bowl game and notes that UK fans who have been to either previous Peach Bowl with Kentucky would find a “more refined” overall experience this time.
“We have an experience built for fans and Mercedes-Benz Stadium is a world-class venue. Fans can stay downtown and walk to the stadium and a huge FanFest. We are programmed to be fan friendly. If Kentucky is in the college football playoffs quarterfinals in Atlanta, it would be a lifetime experience for UK fans.”
Even if it does not happen this year, Epps believes Kentucky fans should be “bullish” on the future with Stein.
“Everybody has tempered expectations coming in the first year and this was really not his roster because he had to put it together so quickly,” Epps said. “To me, what he has done and Kentucky has done has to be one of the most impressive stories in college football.
“Kentucky established an identity almost overnight. Obviously he knows how to coach and motivate kids. He has a good coaching staff and will have to hold on to them in the future the best he can, but with J (Batt) as athletics director that is easier because he knows what it takes to win.
“I have known J for a number of years and with the resources there he will make sure Will has the opportunity to build a good program year after year. Sometimes teams pop up and have a great season, but other teams are building foundations for many great years and I think that is what Kentucky is doing. J knows how to work and support a football program.”
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Don’t expect a highly rated recruiting class from Kentucky women’s basketball coach Kenny Brooks for next season because the UK coaching staff is hitting a pause on high school recruiting for one season.
With players now having five years of eligibility, every player on the current Kentucky roster, including one of the nation’s top players in Clara Strack, is eligible to return to UK next season.
Brooks said at UK’s Media Day he will focus on retaining as many players on his current roster as he can and then make another run at high school recruiting that landed him three McDonald’s All-Americans this season for the 2027-28 year.
“We kind of took a pause, especially because of the implementation of the fifth year. We were on, and if you go back and look at it, we were finalists for a few (2027) players that were really, really good, really good players,” Brooks said.
“But we looked at our freshmen group and we were like, ‘OK, I don’t know how much better, or if they are better than this group.’ So why don’t we just go ahead and focus our attention on the ’26 class and everyone else, because everyone on our team is eligible to come back next year. Everyone.”
Kentucky made the Sweet 16 last season and Brooks had four players picked in the WNBA draft. Guard Asia Boone and Strack are the only returning rotational pieces.
The current roster includes freshman McDonald’s All-Americans Maddyn Greenway, Savvy Swords and Emily McDonald along with 6-foot-5 Ajša Sivka, the No. 10 pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft who has four years of college eligibility to use.
All four seniors can return, including Strack, who could also opt to start her WNBA career.
Kentucky has been involved with several highly ranked 2028 recruits already.
“We’ll probably look into the transfer portal for the ’27s for the next class,” Brooks said. “But we really focused on the ’28 class and we’ve got some really good leads on some ’28s.
“But as far as ’27s, unless something just crazy happens, we probably will not sign a ’27. And that’s intentional because we wanted to look at this group because of the implementation of the fifth year.”
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Florida men’s basketball coach Todd Golden has the team almost everyone expects to win the Southeastern Conference title this year — and contend for a national title — but he has a bold prediction about the SEC.
“It’s going to be as good as it was two years ago,” he said. “Everybody got better.”
Remember, two years ago the SEC had 14 teams make the NCAA Tournament field and both national champion Florida and Auburn reached the Final Four. Only 10 SEC teams made the NCAA field last year, but the tourney expanded from 68 to 76 teams this year and Golden is confident the SEC will have more teams make the NCAA field. The league has seven teams ranked in the preseason AP Top 25.
“This is going to be another historical year in the SEC,” Georgia coach Mike White said at SEC Media Days.
No. 1 Florida returns four starters — center Rueben Chinyelu was the national defensive player of the year, forward Thomas Haugh was a first-team All-SEC forward and Alex Condon earned second-team All-SEC. Golden also returns point guard Boogie Fland and SEC sixth man of the year Urban Klavzar.
“I think the SEC will get between 12 and 14 teams in the field this year,” ESPN/SEC Network analyst Jimmy Dykes said. “There are a lot of great teams in the conference this year.”
Kentucky has been projected as a middle of the pack team in the talented SEC, but has one of the nation’s best transfer portal additions in Iowa State forward Milan Momcilovic, one of the nation’s best 3-point shooters.
“Milan is so big and so skilled. He is an everyday guy who makes everybody better by the way he opens the floor for driving lanes,” Dykes said. “He can make shots any way you have to make them as a 3-point shooter. He is the real deal.”
Dykes likes the positional length that Kentucky has and the way Wildcats head coach Mark Pope identified problem areas from last season and has worked to correct them.
“They just have a lot of good pieces for Mark Pope to work with this year. I like the vibe around this team a lot better than I did at the same time last year,” Dykes said. “They still obviously have work still to do, but they have the pieces to be really good.”
He also thinks adding former UK standout John Pelphrey to the basketball staff will pay off for Pope.
“He is one of my favorite guys that I ever coached at Kentucky. No one has ever understood the importance of that Kentucky jersey as much as John Pelphrey. He brings a ton of value to Kentucky,” Dykes said.
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Morgan Gaerte had a successful two years at Notre Dame before transferring to Kentucky to play for coach Craig Skinner this season, but says the overall experience has been “even better” than she expected.
“I think BBN is incredible. Just the energy that they bring into the games and the home games especially. It’s such an amazing experience,” Gaerte said. “I’ll go out to the grocery store or something, and people will recognize me and be like, ‘Oh, can we get a picture? We love Kentucky volleyball. We love Kentucky.’ So it’s just so much fun. We really love our fans.”
Gaerte had 19 kills as No. 7 Kentucky snapped a rare two-game losing streak with a sweep of Missouri last week. Kentucky swept Missouri 3-0 (25-16, 29-27, 25-17) in three sets inside Historic Memorial Coliseum.
Kentucky is in a four-way tie for second place in the SEC at 8-3 — Florida leads at 10-1 — with four matches remaining starting with a home game. Kentucky will host Alabama on Friday and then host Mississippi State on Senior Day Sunday.
The Cats can still position themselves well for postseason play by winning the final four matches and then making a strong showing in the SEC Tournament — a tourney UK won last year.
“I think this team is really amazing,” Gaerte said. “We feed off each other. If you show up at practice and you’re not really feeling it, I mean, we all pick each other up. But that is what I expected.
“I knew there were going to be some hard-fought battles. That’s what makes it so fun. The competitive energy makes it so exciting. I think every match in front of us is the most important one. So just tune things out and find our groove to get ready for a big finish.”
Kentucky had a 2-0 lead and Tennessee before losing and then was swept by Texas A&M in its next match. No one on this team had experienced losing six straight sets.
“It was kind of shocking for us. I think we know how much talent we have. We just didn’t play our best there. But I think we kind of used that as a turning point,” Gaerte said. “We’ve been talking about it a lot and bouncing back from that, finding our groove again.
“I think it was really cool the response we had from those two losses. I think we’re just going to carry that with us for the rest of the season.”
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Quote of the Week: “He has been amazing. Stoops was also very welcoming. But (Will) Stein, (general manager) Pete Nochta and the whole crew have gone above and beyond to make guys feel welcome. The history of the program really matters to them,” former UK all-SEC tight end Jacob Tamme.
Quote of the Week 2: “Will Stein is the Coach of the Year. And anybody else who would be in contention probably had a much better team to start the season than he did,” SEC Network host/analyst Paul Finebaum, on SEC Coach of the Year voting.
Quote of the Week 3: “I think we all get along well and get along does not mean it’s sunshine and roses every single day. It’s truth. It’s holding people accountable, even as a staff, and ultimately guys that you love being around and love Kentucky football,” Will Stein, on his coaching staff.
