Recruiting ceiling is rising for Kentucky football

On3 imageby:Adam Luckett06/18/22

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At the end of the day, college football is a personnel game. Getting into football scheme can be fun, but teams need good players to win games. There is no getting around that.

For years, Kentucky would have to find undervalued prospects and develop them into top-flight players to win on Saturdays. That might not be the case in the modern-day.

Kentucky is fresh off of signing the top recruiting class in program history as the 2022 haul featured a pair of top-100 recruits to go along with seven top-300 prospects. Kentucky finished with a top-15 recruiting class, and the coaching staff did it by landing top-500 recruits from eight different states.

Mark Stoops talked with Kentucky Sports Radio on Friday and discussed the current state of affairs for Kentucky football recruiting.

“We were dispersed all throughout the country, we were all over the place,” Stoops said about the 2022 recruiting class. “I think early on we know what kind of football players there are in Kentucky. Every year it’s gotten better since I’ve been here. We know what kind of football players are in Ohio but I think it’s fair to say we took guys early on — like we took an abundance of guys — that we developed into players. As we have more success, you’re trying to recruit more of the polished, finished product.

That polished, finished product means more players who are more proven prospects at the high school level. For example, Kentucky signed top-100 wideout Barion Brown out of Nashville and top-200 EDGE Tyreese Fearbry out of Pittsburgh. Landing players of that caliber simply wasn’t possible a few years ago for Kentucky football.

It is now.

“There’s going to be years where the talent in Kentucky, those 3, 4, 5 guys are really good,” Stoops told Matt Jones. “And then there’s years where it’s just good. The same with Ohio. As we get better, our footprint has expanded in the south. What I didn’t like when I first got here is that there was a big concentration in going south but we were taking guys that couldn’t play at this level. As we’re getting better and as we’re winning, we’re getting more respect throughout that south, and now we’re getting better players.

Those better players showed up in 2022. In the class of 2021, Kentucky signed top-100 linebacker Trevin Wallace out of South Georgia over Auburn. Kentucky’s recruiting reputation has grown and it’s leading to more blue-chip prospects being interested in wearing the blue and white.

Landing those better prospects more frequently is what will allow Kentucky to continue its climb up the SEC ladder.

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