Conrad hopes to make early impact at TE

Most guys remember that welcome-to-college-football moment, the big hit that serves notice that whatever you were in high school, you're something else when you step on a college campus.

C.J. Conrad has some trouble narrowing it down.

Kentucky's freshman tight end -- a December enrollee who's participating in spring practice rather than finishing out his senior year of high school -- has taken more than his share of wakeup-call wallops.

"I have one of those, like, almost every practice," he said Monday.

But that's sort of the point for Conrad, a 6-foot-5, 240-pound native of LaGrange, Ohio, who's hoping to jump-start the learning process with a semester and summer at UK before fall camp opens in August.

The goal is for Conrad -- who caught 180 passes for 2,436 yards and 32 touchdowns in his high school career -- to give the Wildcats a versatile tight end who can block but also can be a key cog in a passing offense.

"We haven't had that in a long time," Conrad said. "A lot of the things I did in high school, that's what I'm trying to get to transfer here -- just be that receiving threat and a blocking threat."

It has, in fact, been seven years since Kentucky had a top-flight tight end. That was Jacob Tamme, a player to whom Conrad said he's compared "all the time."

As a UK senior, Tamme caught 56 passes for 619 yards and six touchdowns. In seven seasons since, Kentucky tight ends have combined to average 21.8 catches for 238.2 yards and 1.7 touchdowns per season.

Last season, Kentucky's tight ends -- Steven Borden and Ronnie Shields -- combined for seven catches, 62 yards and no touchdowns. In Tamme's final regular-season game at UK, he caught nine passes for 109 yards and a touchdown by himself.

"That was the recruiting pitch when I was being recruited here was, 'We haven't had a guy like that,'" Conrad said.

And it's too early to say if Conrad can be a guy like that -- "Everybody needs to calm down a little bit with everything," offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson said, given that Conrad hasn't played a college game -- but he's off to a good start.

"The kid's a special player," Dawson said.

Already he's shown flashes of it. Conrad caught four passes in the scrimmage portion of Kentucky's second open practice this spring -- including a 32-yard reception on a throw from Drew Barker -- and had a touchdown catch in the first.

Conrad has been "a very good player," UK coach Mark Stoops said, but also "a typical freshman." He's taken harder hits than in high school. He's struggled at times through the grind of a faster, more physical game.

It probably didn't help that Conrad arrived on campus at 217 pounds in December, the result of a shortened high school basketball season -- he played 11 games before his early graduation -- on the heels of a football playoff run at Keystone High School.

Conrad said he took "about three days off" between sports seasons, and the constant running resulted in a 13-pound weight loss from the start of his senior football season to his enrollment at UK. It came back quickly, but not easily.

"I think the first 10 pounds was just getting back to where I was," Conrad said. "And then 10 pounds of hard work, I guess. I don't know. Just a lot of eating."

Now a strapping 240, Conrad can take a hit, though he can't shrug them off like he could in high school. The first day of contact this spring, he said, defensive lineman Denzil Ware and linebacker Nico Firios "put me on my back once or twice," Conrad said, and he knew he'd stepped up a level.

And there's mental catch-up to do, too.

It helps, Conrad said, that Dawson is a first-year offensive coordinator, so he's learning new plays and terminology along with his more experienced teammates. Still, there are daily welcome-to-college reminders.

"I think (a new playbook) takes a lot of pressure off me. I won't feel as stressed, like, 'Oh, I've got to get myself ready for fall camp,'" Conrad said. "I feel like I'm starting to be like one of the guys now. Just physically, mentally, (I'm) getting used to the college experience, because all-around -- football, academically -- it's definitely a step higher."