Kentucky Wildcats Football: Tuesday news

I took this weekend off to celebrate my birthday, but I’m back today to do a quick football update for the past week or so.

Sheehan a Cat!
On Saturday, Ft. Thomas Highlands wide receiver Austin Sheehan announced that he will forgo several scholarship offers and other preferred walk-on opportunities to suit up for the Kentucky Wildcats. This is a HUGE pickup for UK for a couple of reasons. First, Sheehan had walk-on offers from Ohio State and Arkansas and both of those schools would be considered as programs with higher profiles than Kentucky by most. On top of that, he chose UK over scholarship offers from other schools and passed up free tuition to play for the Cats. We’ve talked a lot about Sheehan here on the WBN and I can’t express how big of a pickup I think he is.  You can’t argue with his production at the high school level and the guy is a big UK fan. I see a lot of Dicky Lyons and Glenn Holt in him and I think he will be a contributor on offense before his career in Lexington is over.

Daylen Hall dismissed
Sophomore-to-be Daylen Hall was dismissed from the football team as first reported by Aaron over at BBK.  It’s unclear exactly what Hall’s transgression was, but this isn’t the first time he’s been in trouble.  Hall saw action as a true freshman this fall and had a great deal of potential at UK that will likely never materialize now. Hopefully he can straighten things out for himself, but his departure has left an already thin secondary without yet another corner moving forward.

Daniel Ross to grayshirt?
After committing to UK early on, Ross did not sign with the Cats two weeks ago on National Signing Day and all signs indicated he was heading for junior college.  Now this report indicates that he may be joining the Kentucky team for the spring semester in 2013. This does bear following due to the never-ending need for quality defensive linemen in the SEC.

JUCO options
Kentucky will have an opportunity to re-recruit both ATH Bubba Tandy (Christian Co. HS, KY) and DL David Washington (Lovejoy HS, GA), who signed with Kentucky with the 2011 class, but failed to qualify. Tandy is expected to play in the defensive backfield and Washington is projected on the defensive line. With the need UK has at both positions, both guys are likely targets for the Cats.

Maxwell Smith incident
Earlier this week message boards started filling with reports that incumbent starting quarterback Maxwell Smith was involved in an altercation outside of the football field. No official word has been released, but apparently Smith did sustain an injury of some sort. There are really just too few details about what happened and there seems to be a lot of speculating going on, but this is certainly something for UK fans to follow if it did actually happen. We’ll be following this rumor and updating as news/information becomes available.

Junior Day(s)
Kentucky will hold two separate junior days in the coming weeks on February 18th and again on the 25th to attempt to lure some of the top targets in the 2013 class to Lexington. With the state of Kentucky being absolutely loaded with talent, a couple of commitments could come UK’s way by March.

NFL draft
Several Kentucky seniors are preparing for the NFL draft right now.  The general consensus is that both Winston Guy and Danny Trevathan are expected to be picked up, but opinions on exactly where they project to be drafted vary widely. Other seniors could hear their name called as well, and there’s a chance guys like Stuart Hines, Matt Roark, Chandler Burden, Billy Joe Murphy, Mark Crawford, Ronnie Sneed, Randall Burden and others could be invited to NFL camps even if they aren’t drafted.

That’s it for now, but keep checking back here at the WBN for Kentucky football updates.