4-star CB Austin Ausberry looking to visit Kentucky in near future

On3 imageby:Zack Geoghegan08/02/21

ZGeogheganKSR

(Photo courtesy of Austin Ausberry)

Convincing a Bayou kid to not play for LSU is a always tough task, but Kentucky is going to give its best shot.

Austin Ausberry, a four-star cornerback prospect out of University Laboratory School down in Baton Rouge, LA, is hoping to soon set up a visit to check out everything that Kentucky has to offer. The 6-foot-1, 185-pound class of 2022 defensive back told KSR on Monday that he talks with new Wildcat defensive backs coach Chris Collins on a daily basis and that a trip to Lexington will happen in the near future.

I’ve been talking to Coach Collins about getting on campus. I’m still playing it by ear,” Ausberry told KSR. “It’s all love between me and Coach Collins. He calls me about every day, we have a good relationship, and I like him as a person and as a coach.”

Ranked by 247 Sports as the 258th best player in his class and the 28th best cornerback, Ausberry is a highly sought-after recruit with interest from several big-name programs. Starting on August 1, coaches were officially allowed to extend written scholarship offers to high school prospects. Ausberry quickly received written offers from the likes of Alabama, Florida, LSU, Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Auburn.

“It felt great. It felt great,” Ausberry told KSR about receiving so many written offers. “I felt the love and I felt the connections was there with the coaches.”

Already this summer, Ausberry told KSR that he took visits to see the campuses of Alabama and Notre Dame in June before checking out Florida and the home-state LSU Tigers in July. Looking down the road to the rest of the summer and into the fall, Ausberry plans to revisit Alabama, LSU, and Florida while taking trips to Kentucky and Michigan for the first time. However, no dates have been set for any of those potential visits and there is no timeline for a final decision right now.

Despite the connections to LSU–his father, Verge, played linebacker at LSU for four seasons in the late 1980s and is now the Executive Deputy AD for the school–Ausberry says his recruitment is wide open. Every school has to recruit him the same, no matter where he holds ties to.

“Everyone has to recruit me the same no matter where I’m from because I want to go where it’s best for me.”

Since Kentucky received a decommitment from four-star cornerback Jeremiah Caldwell on Sunday, adding another defensive back to the 2022 class is a bigger priority than it had previously been. Ausberry would be an excellent replacement plan if the Kentucky staff could pull it off, but there is still plenty of ground to be made up. LSU holds one Crystal Ball prediction and two FutureCast picks for Ausberry, but all three of those were logged back in March.

Collins came to Kentucky from Georgia State known as an ace recruiter–now is the time to put that reputation to work.

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