THE LONG JOURNEY: Bryant Koback's ups, downs and future

In the 2016 calendar year alone Koback became recognized as one of the Midwest's top prospects, committed to a football future in the Southeastern Conference, put together one of the most incredible early-season resumes of any senior in the history of the Ohio prep ranks and, finally, saw that season end early due to a devastating injury.

While Koback is a three-star prospect according to Rivals.com, he's not exactly unheralded. The underdog label doesn't fit him all that well.

At 5-foot-11 and roughly 200 pounds, Koback has long been considered a physical anomaly. It's rare for any player, let alone a player at 200 pounds, to run the 40-yard dash in 4.3 seconds. That's just what Koback did last year and before. Repeatedly. Seemingly every time Koback lined up and sprinted those forty yards he did so in less than 4.4 seconds. At Kentucky. At Ohio State. Everywhere he was. So it's safe to say that people knew him, locally and in the recruiting world, and he's been a bit of a big deal for a while.

That helps explain Koback's start to the 2016 season. He put up big numbers as a junior, but nothing like what he was doing at the start of his senior season.

Koback rushed for 1,100 yards in the first month of Springfield's season. But that doesn't do justice to just how incredible Koback's senior season performance was. Those 1,100 yards were accumulated in roughly five quarters of action.

"Everybody says I played in five games," Koback told Cats Illustrated in an interview this week. "But, in reality, in the fifth game I played two plays. In the fourth game I played three quarters. In earlier games I played a quarter here or there but that's it.

"I don't know, I just told the guys I was getting into my groove. Not only me, but the team in general, from the offensive line to everybody. We would have a great week before the game and it worked out great for the entire offense."

Because Koback played so sparingly in most of his games early in 2016 that held him back from putting up what could have been the most incredible stat line of any running back in the country. That's no exaggeration. He topped the 400-yard mark in one game and did it on special teams, too, returning one game's opening kickoff 90 yards for a score. That 4.3-second 40-yard dash on a 200-yard frame was impossible for high school opponents to reckon with.

But then things went south for Koback and, subsequently, Springfield.

In Springfield's fifth game of the season Koback got off to another incredible start.

On Koback's first carry on the road against Southview, the team he had scored a 74-yard touchdown against in the first quarter in a 2015 game, he took it to the house for the game's opening points.

On Koback's second carry Springfield snapped the ball right around midfield. He took the ball up the sideline, spun off a defender around the 10-yard line, and was horse collared by a second Southview player. Still another defender hit Koback as he was going down and all of his weight pressed down on his right leg. Koback had broken his tibia and his fibula. In one unfortunate instant, Koback's remarkable 2016 season and his high school career had ended.

"I was down," Koback admitted. "I was down but I still found a way to be motivated. I was motivated to come back."

He wouldn't come back to Springfield, for the rest of that year or ever, at least in live game action on the field. But he worked to come back because a future at Kentucky awaited, and because he was motivated to show support for his teammates who were still forging ahead.

"I still went to my practices. I stayed on the sideline. I sat in the wheelchair at practices on the sideline," Koback said. "When I did that I wasn't so down because I was still around my team. I was still seeing them working just as hard and still winning."

It's a credit to Koback's teammates that they were able to play as well as they did in Koback's absence. While he had been, for all practical purposes, the entirety of the Springfield offense, they transitioned to a different identity with Koback out and still managed to win their last five regular season games without him, before losing to Westlake 48-41, in overtime, in their first playoff game.

Now it's 2017 and Koback is on the cusp of the next chapter of his life as a student-athlete. This chapter will take place in Lexington, Ky.

Koback arrives at Kentucky this weekend to enroll a semester early.

"I'm going down with my aunt, my uncle and my grandparents and we're leaving Saturday morning. We'll stay at a hotel and then we're moving on Sunday," Koback said. "I don't know exactly what my schedule will look like yet. We've talked a little bit about it but we've got to figure out more. But it's starting to sink in for sure. Every time I think about it I just get a big smile. I'm starting a new chapter in a different environment. And it's at a place that's on the rise."

Koback is thrilled with the location of his college. That's one reason he thought Kentucky was the right fit as a prospect coming out of Ohio who had offers from schools in the ACC, Big Ten and elsewhere.

"The location is perfect for me," Koback told Cats Illustrated. "It's close enough that if there's an emergency or if I get home sick I can make the drive home. I can go ahead and do that. My family will still be able to come to my home games and that was a big thing for me."

Koback is Kentucky's only 2017 running back commitment to date, and while he didn't say that was a big factor it couldn't have hurt the Cats' chances. Opportunities seem to be opening up for him. Boom Williams just announced he would forego his senior season with the Cats to pursue his NFL dream. Earlier in the year then-junior UK running back Mikel Horton had announced he would be transferring at the end of the semester, and he left the team during the season. Jojo Kemp exhausted his eligibility after the TaxSlayer Bowl against Georgia Tech.

Currently the only scholarship running backs Kentucky is set to have on roster are Benny Snell, A.J. Rose and Sihiem King, so the Cats don't have anywhere near the depth, on paper, that they seemed to have going into the 2016 season.

While Snell is the presumed favorite to land the starting role because of his 1,000-yard true freshman season, a record-shattering year, and though King has shown flashes of potential -- most recently in an impressive second half against Tennessee -- with A.J. Rose drawing the praise of Mark Stoops and the staff, there's reason to believe Koback could find his way into the rotation as a true freshman.

There's one big if: If Koback is ready, physically, to step into live SEC game action.

"It all just depends on how I come back with my leg," Koback said. "We're just taking it a step at a time right now. The first thing everybody is worried about is my let getting back to 100-percent. It's looking like that will happen really soon. It's the dead period and I really haven't gotten to talk to them since that started much, but I'll go down there and get evaluated again then on Sunday or Monday. Then I'll go from there.

"I'm actually doing physical therapy right now. I'm rebuilding all the muscle back in my leg and hopefully I'll start jogging on a treadmill in the next week or two. After that it should be boom, boom, boom. Sprinting, jumping and all that."

Koback is under the impression that he could be back to 100-percent within two months, and he considers that a conservative estimate. If that happens he would be a full-go before spring practice, and that would put him on course to legitimately compete for playing time during the 2017 season. That would greatly aid UK's depth situation in the backfield next year. But he, and others, don't want to put the cart before the horse and assume things will play out that way before his leg is actually where it needs to be.

He's convinced that enrolling early at Kentucky will help get his leg back to normal sooner than it otherwise would be.

"I think being at Kentucky will really be beneficial. With all the technology they have and all the people that will be pushing me more and harder, it's going to be big for me," Koback said.

Koback said he didn't know Williams would be entering the draft, so it's not something the Kentucky coaches were telling him would definitely happen.

"In my head it was always a 50-50 thing but it wasn't going to change anything in my mentality," he said.

Koback told Cats Illustrated that he never second-guessed his decision to attend Kentucky, even through the Cats' 0-2 start, even with other schools offer, and even with Ohio State head coach Urban Meyer showing up at Springfield High School on the very day he suffered that season-ending injury. He was always sold on what Kentucky, and Vince Marrow in particular, told him.

It probably didn't hurt to watch Williams and Snell become the first pair of 1,000-yard rushers in the history of Kentucky's football program.

"Yeah, that was pretty cool to see," he acknowledged. "That was big. Not a lot of schools have done that, especially in the SEC."

But more than anything it was Koback's relationship with Marrow that seems to have convinced him that Kentucky was the right fit.

"He's been huge," Koback said of Marrow. "I mean, he's always pretty much just been there for me. I can always ask him questions and he's always told me the truth, this entire time. He's been honest. He's always been there checking up and making sure everything's good. Keeping my confidence up. He kind of talks you up to yourself and tells you that you can do it. He's let me know that if anything stops me it's going to be my own mentality. Coach Marrow pretty much helps you keep the mental game straight. He's also been relaying how the team is reacting to the games that they're playing and that's been good.

"As for Coach (Eddie) Gran, his offense produces. It produces. It produced this year and it spoke for itself pretty much with the two 1,000-yard rushers."

Koback said he's also looking forward to having Gran as his position coach because they share a couple of hobbies off the field.

"Hunting and fishing," Koback said with a laugh, noting that he's heard those are popular pastimes with some other players already in Lexington.

It's easy to understand why Kentucky's coaches were happy to accept Koback's commitment, and the fact that they haven't taken any other running backs in spite of losing three players at the position and following Koback's injury is further proof of how they feel about Koback.

"I'm an every down back," Koback said. "I can catch the ball. I can run the ball and make people miss. I've got outside speed, good strength and good size."

Koback said if there are two things he could improve on the most it would be his downhill running and his pass protection, although the latter is something almost any high school running back can improve on.

Although Koback never wavered in his decision his official visit, the weekend of December 3rd, was good reinforcement that he had made the right choice. Kentucky's basketball team took on UCLA that weekend and because the football team's regular season was over there was more time for Koback to spend with the coaches and some future teammates.

"It was great not only being there as a recruit but also recruiting some big, key players that we want and would love to join us," Koback said.