Kentucky Wildcats Football: Wednesday Recruiting Bonanza!

Well, it’s officially Summer. It’s hot. The NBA Finals are over.

The only sports on TV are soccer and baseball. Some folks will tune into the NBA draft. But for the most part, football is on deck. It’s now that we enter that grueling space of time between seasons where there is just very little in the news stream. Seventy days. That’s how long until college football returns. Until then we are left with reporting off-season arrests (sigh) and departures (knock on wood). Oh and this new thing Kentucky is trying called recruiting, turns out that they are pretty good at it.

• Four star defensive end Darius Fullwood still plans on announcing his commitment on June 28^th. He has considered moving it back but right now is on track to commit. Kentucky is definitely in the mix and a lot will depend on his visit to Ohio State. It’s unclear if Fullwood is a take for the Buckeyes and if they aren’t the choice, it’s tough to see anyone beating UK here.
• Lakota West OL George Asafo-Adjei plans on committing soon. What “soon” means is a bit unclear though. Recent reports say that he expects to announce on July 19^th. There’s a camp in Lexington that day. The four star has always held Kentucky in his top 3 and it seems like the Cats have surged ahead of UL and West Virginia recently. He visited recently with his coach and George Brown, it’s good to see those guys building a bond.
• Speaking of Brown, everyone seems to feel good about Kentucky’s chances despite his nationwide interest and plans to visit nearly everyone. He isn’t planning to announce until October, so the winds can change, but right now Brown may be leaning toward joining his friends in Lexington.
• Wide Receiver commit Alex Stump has had offers pouring in since he pledged to Kentucky, but the new attention hasn’t fazed him. That may have changed with an offer from Stanford. The four star from Ohio seemed very excited about the offer from the Cardinal. Ohio guys usually don’t go that far from home, but things could get dicey if Stump visits Palo Alto.
• After becoming a national recruiting brand and holding the top ranking per Rivals for a time last year, Kentucky may be looking inward for talent. As evidenced by the offer to Devon Wharton, which nobody saw coming. The staff is also expressing interest in Shaun Whittinghill, CJ Walker, and Davis Mattingly, guys who aren’t rated by the major networks yet. At this point fans should be able to trust the staff to identify talent, regardless of stars. Throw in names like Damien Harris, Elijah Sindelar, Reese Ryan, Eli Brown, Mason Wolfe and Emmitt Smith to go with a stacked 2016 class and it looks like the overall talent level in the Bluegrass is on the rise. That can only benefit Kentucky.
• Regarding Whittinghill, we should have an interview with him soon.
• Regarding Ryan and Mattingly, it looks like one of them will be the quarterback Kentucky takes in this class. Otherwise they simply may wait until next year to sign a signal caller. It’s simply isn’t a position of need and the Cats have missed on several of their highly rated targets for whatever reason. It could be the presence of Patrick Towles and Drew Barker on the roster already. It’s tough to sell playing time when you have two young four stars on campus and they happen to be fan favorites.
• Kentucky target Quandeski Whitlow , the cousin of former quarterback Jalen Whitlow, committed to South Carolina shortly after visiting the Gamecocks.
• The class isn’t finished by any means but tight end CJ Conrad is starting to like the top impact player in it. Conrad has dominated every camp that he has attended and will attend The Opening. Drawing comparisons to Jeremy Shockey can’t be bad either. Conrad is a guy that could walk onto campus and be the starter from day one. Which isn’t a knock on Darryl Long, who I like a lot, but Conrad is just a complete package. Ideally Long will develop to the point that UK can use them in tandem in 2015.
• There is a lot of buzz going on following the last camp but don’t get too excited about Jaylond Woods. He is currently committed to Tennessee and it would be very tough to flip him from the Vols. UT has recruited him as a DB, he worked out one both sides of them ball at Kentucky.
• Some defensive backs to watch would be Kei Beckham and Jalen Thompson. Thompson was set to commit to Florida recently but apparently didn’t have a committable offer from the Gators and has now eliminated them. The same may be true of his other front-runner Georgia. Thompson has picked up his interest in Kentucky of late. Beckham is a name that you should be familiar with by now. He has had UK interest for quite a while and was openly listing them as his favorite. Then things cooled off, but have heated back up again. Beckham will be camping at UK in July so we could see him pull the trigger then.