Recruiting never stops: Kentucky is working daily to evaluate talent, build relationships

On3 imageby:Adam Luckett03/28/23

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Recruiting is the lifeblood of your program. That is even more true in the SEC when every program except Vanderbilt can reasonably expect top-25 recruiting results. There must be consistent work committed daily to recruiting high school players and being ready to pivot at any point to evaluate transfer portal targets.

With spring practice off and running at the Joe Craft Football Training Facility, Kentucky’s coaching staff and support staff is working daily to complete much-needed recruiting evaluations and work the phones. Offensive coordinator Liam Coen provided a rundown of what a typical day looks like for the Wildcats after stepping off the practice field on Tuesday morning.

“Everyday we’re kind of meeting at 3:30 with the recruiting staff and doing this for the last X amount of weeks,” Coen told KSR on Tuesday. “Last two months really where everyday we’re doing football. Like right now, we’ll go watch the film as a staff, break for lunch, and in the afternoon get ready for tomorrow’s walkthrough and all that. After that, at 3:30 this afternoon, we’ll get with the recruiting staff and we’re watching film. We got kids on FaceTime and we’re kind of doing it as a group together. And everyday’s a new position group.

In the class of 2024, Kentucky currently has two verbal commitments with in-state prospects Hayes Johnson and Aba Selm on board to become new members of the Big Blue Wall. Meanwhile, the coaching staff is working hard to get visits scheduled. On Tuesday, three-star tight end Gavin Grover and four-star cornerback Terhyon Nichols made the trip south to visit Kentucky.

Right now is all about completing the proper pre-work and using the resources available in the most efficient way possible to allow Kentucky to slide over to the relationship-building stage as quickly as possible.

“I think we’re doing a nice job as far as being on the same page,” Coen said.

For the former NFL assistant coach, there was a learning curve during his first stint in Lexington. Now that Coen has a better lay of the land, things are running more smoothly as Kentucky is constantly tinkering its recruiting board.

“I didn’t really a hundred percent know what we were looking for in terms of I just wasn’t here that long of recruiting,” Coen said. “It was COVID that first spring so we weren’t on the road, we weren’t really doing much. Kids weren’t coming on campus and then in the summer we had camp here which really helped me really kind of get a gauge for some of the players and things like that. This go round you kind of have a better feel for the numbers, now the portal, and all those kind of things to be able to kind of really work it as you would in an NFL roster.

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QB evaluations are not easy

The elephant in the room for the 2023 Kentucky football team is if the offensive line can make the needed improvements after a brutal 2022 campaign. However, the program’s long-term biggest concern is different.

Landing Will Levis and Devin Leary out of the transfer portal has helped the program fill the gaps, but the Wildcats have had consistent problems landing high school quarterbacks on national signing day. Liam Coen is trying to change that, but properly evaluating the position is not an easy task.

“Quarterback is a difficult position to evaluate at this level,” Coen said when asked about positional evaluations. “Until you get with them and work with them in person, it’s hard at times to watch a Hudl tape from like eight miles in the sky and see a kid’s motion and how he can play the game. So I’d say quarterback in the terms of we gotta get him on campus, we gotta see him in person to be able to do that.”

That is what makes visits so critical. As Kentucky builds its recruiting board at quarterback, the recruiting department must get prospective prospects on campus for a proper evaluation to be completed. In his first stint, Coen played a big role in Kentucky getting Chris Parson (Mississippi State), Brock Glenn (Florida State), Christopher Vizzina (Clemson), Grayson Loftis (Duke), and Raheim Jeter (East Carolina) on campus to complete evaluations.

As Kentucky does important work in the class of 2025, both Cutter Boley and Ryan Montgomery have been on campus multiple times. Stone Saunders is also planning to make a trip to Lexington soon. Kentucky has done its evaluation due diligence and is continuing to build relationships with these blue-chip prospects.

All signs point to the high school quarterback recruiting cold streak ending soon for the Wildcats.

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2024-03-28