Kentucky doesn’t have any in-state commitments from the 2018 class, in case you hadn’t heard. It’s a legitimate headline, no doubt, and it has been one of the more popular recruiting discussion topics at Cats Illustrated on the fan forums.
But how problematic is that, and how much in-state talent does Kentucky really need?
One person’s opinion follows.
Almost every school in the country talks about ‘building a fence’ around its home state, a certain part of its state, or its region, depending on the program and where it’s located.
Southern Cal’s first recruiting priority is locking down the top talent in Southern California, then monopolizing, as best it can, the best of the rest on the west coast.
Ohio State is taking fewer in-state players than ever under Urban Meyer as they have gone more national in their recruiting efforts, but the top in-state players are still an important part of the Buckeyes’ core talent base.
Texas’ dip in in-state recruiting success is one reason the Longhorns have struggled on the field in recent years, and reasserting their Longhorn dominance over the Lone Star State has to be a top priority.
And Kentucky, not surprisingly, wants to keep home the best players in Kentucky.
Through the first part of Mark Stoops’ tenure they were doing that, for the most part. Drew Barker, Matt Elam, Jason Hatcher, Ryan Timmons and the list goes on. More recently, Landon Young, Drake Jackson, Kash Daniel, DaVonte Robinson, Zy’Aire Hughes. Even last year, Walker Wood and Austin Dotson.
Kentucky won high-profile battles for headliners in the state. They won as underdogs making up ground. They found sleepers through their own evaluation or through searching for diamonds in the rough at camp.
But Kentucky doesn’t have any in-state commitments in the 2018 class. And don’t look now but Stephen Herron (2019) is committed to Michigan, Jacob Lacey (2019) is committed to Notre Dame, and Bryan Hudson (2019) is very much enamored with Alabama and other high profile out-of-state programs.
Some fans look at that and see reason for serious concern. But how concerning should that be?
My answer: Under almost any other circumstances it would be very concerning, but under present circumstances, which are quite unique, it’s not very concerning.
Usually if a program’s in-state recruiting success dips it’s a bad bellwether for recruiting in general. Sometimes in-state recruiting is the last thing to go. Sometimes it’s not, but it’s usually still an indicator of the health of the program. If a program is winning and drawing top out-of-state recruits, they’re probably also winning with local players.
But in Kentucky’s case, the dip in in-state recruiting has come at the same time as a surge in out-of-state recruiting. Apparently, there’s absolutely no correlation between the lack of in-state success recently and the rise in out-of-state success.
Kentucky’s brand hasn’t been this strong in Michigan for decades. Kentucky’s brand has never been stronger in Ohio. If you remember when Kentucky’s brand has been this strong in South Florida then I’ll tip my cap and defer to your judgment, but I don’t think it’s ever been this strong, either.
There have been times when Kentucky has hammered Tennessee or Georgia with more regularity, but throw in the recent success in the ‘DMV’ and the fact that Kentucky is being more selective in the South, as opposed to the wide net approach, and that’s not concerning at all. It’s strategy.
Frankly, the lack of 2018 commitments isn’t a problem because the 2018 class in Kentucky isn’t very good. Jairus Brents (Louisville/Waggener) is someone the staff would probably like to add, and Rondale Moore (Louisville/Trinity) has a very bright future at Texas, but beyond that it would have been slim pickens.
More concerning would be the early decisions from Herron and Lacey from the 2019 class. Lacey was probably never going to Kentucky and Herron might have been more of a long-shot than it seemed early, but to lose a pair of big-time in-state defensive linemen from the Commonwealth’s borders does sting. There’s still a chance to make a dent with players like Hudson, Tanner Bowles, Milton Wright, Wandale Robinson and Shawnkel Knight-Goff among others, so it’s too early to say the in-state operation has really hit a substantial speedbump.
If you’ll remember, I’ve been saying for many, many months that early in Stoops’ tenure the staff benefited from favorable in-state dynamics. Lots of the state’s top players either came from high school programs, areas or backgrounds favorable to UK. The 2018 and 2019 classes have been less favorable by those measures, so the terrain on the ground in-state has just been more difficult.
But so long as Kentucky is recruiting as well as it’s recruiting in Ohio, South Florida and elsewhere (but especially in Ohio and South Florida), all will be well. Frankly, Kentucky doesn’t even really need much local talent if Kentucky recruits well in those other places.
Truthfully, the Commonwealth is never going to provide a sufficient amount of talent to develop a legitimate, SEC-caliber core. It can be part of that core, but only a small part of it. Whether Kentucky is taking four or five players from the state on average, or two, it will only be a small part. And frankly, on a smaller scale, it could be a situation like Ohio State’s, where the less players from the state Kentucky takes, the better a sign it is overall. If Kentucky can recruit higher-caliber players from Ohio and South Florida, as opposed to relying on the kind of borderline SEC-caliber in-state talent some previous regimes have taken, is that a bad thing?
Fans love seeing local players succeed, but take the bigger, broader view here. UK needs to bounce back a bit in-state from where they’ve been so far with the 2018 and 2019 class, but it’s not a crisis and Kentucky’s football success has a lot more to do with how the Cats recruit and develop players from elsewhere.
There’s also the question of whether the state is producing more talent than it did in the past. Naturally the question arises when there is a strong year for talent in the state (see: 2014, 2016, 2019). The state’s talent may be rising incrementally, whereas its rising astronomically in places like Georgia and Tennessee, but there has yet to be any compelling evidence presented, from anyone, to indicate the state’s talent is substantially on the rise.
