How Committed Are Our Commits?

With all the hype surrounding both this football season and Stoops’ 2014 recruits one would imagine that they go hand in hand. But do they? With Stoops beginning his Kentucky career 0-1, losing to in-state “little brother” Western Kentucky University many have begun questioning the strength of the commitment our recruits have to UK. Would top recruits still want to attend a school that went 2-10 and followed that up with a season opener sloppy loss?

The theme of the week it seems is “commitment”. Starting with tweets from DeWayne Peevy, UK’s Deputy Director of Athletics. So with that theme in mind, I caught up with some of our 2014 commits to see how “committed” they still are.

I talked to Stanley “Boom” Williams, a 4-star running back commit from Monroe, Georgia. Williams said he was watching the game, but turned it off into the 3^rd quarter when things started to get ugly.  I asked him as a commit to UK, what were his thoughts on a loss like that. Williams said, “even though we (UK) lost, I think we still played good with the new coaching staff and new offense. Once everyone gets on the same page we will start to get on a roll.” I asked the looming question: does a loss like that affect your commitment to UK at all? “No it doesn’t” Williams said, “I knew this season was going to be a grind season and I’m with the team every step of the way no matter what.” Stoops during his SEC teleconference today said “oh yeah, there’s definitely going to be negative recruiting” in regards to keeping all his commits committed. Opposing fans often tweet things like “2-10” or about how Stoops is overhyped to commits, Drew Barker (2014 QB commit) mentioned it after the game. “I didn’t really get negative tweets after the game, more after I committed. I got a lot of tweets from UK fans saying ‘stick with us’ so I tweeted out that I was fully committed,” Williams said. I also asked if he had spoke to UK coaches since the game, he said he had spoke to several of them. “The coaches basically told me what I already knew (in regards to the game)” Williams said, “I pretty much knew it was going to be like this. They told me work was required to be a top team and they’re just going to go back on the field and work harder before the other games. We have to put in work to be a top SEC team and those changes don’t happen right away, but we’re going to be alright.” I also wanted to know if as a commit, a loss like this makes you feel like you can come in and be more of an impact player. Williams said, “Its not about me and my impact, its about the team. I feel like we (the 2014) class can all come in and have an impact and go to work and do what we have to do. I think we’re going to be really good, really fast and play well as a team and work really well together.”

I also talked to Darius West, a 4-star safety commit from Lima, Ohio. WKU loss aside, lots of de-commitment talk has been around West as of late as he took an unofficial to Michigan State last weekend. First and foremost, I asked West how committed he was to UK at this exact moment. “I’m 100% committed to the University of Kentucky. I just wanted to see what else was out there, but I’m 100% committed.” Darius said he also watched the first half of the game and turned it off at halftime out of frustration. When I asked him what a loss like this is like for a commit, West said, “It makes me hungrier to get out there to Kentucky and get with my team and help them get better and get more wins.” He said the loss does not affect his commitment status at all. I asked West about the “negative recruiting” aspect Stoops was concerned about and he too said he didn’t see any of that. He also told me when he committed he got lots of “you committed to a 2-10 team” talk but West said, “I don’t pay attention to any of that for real.” West said he has also spoken to UK coaches since Saturday and they told him there were no excuses for losing but “they were just going to get back on the field and work harder and focus more at practice.”

My final question to both commits was do they think there will be more of a turnaround this season, or next:

Williams: “Turn around starts this year, they’ll win games- and more and more games next year. Maybe a bowl game- it starts now but it’ll carry over to next year. We’re going to get better and better each year.”

West: “I think it’s a 50/50 turnaround. They’ll get it started this year and we’ll finish it out next year. It’s going to turn around.”

Both commits seemed firm in their commitment to UK, and seemed very optimistic about both this season as well as the next. We as the BBN could learn a lesson from these two: stay positive and committed to our football team.

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