Kentucky senior offensive lineman Landon Young, who had a relationship with UK offensive line coach John Schlarman dating back to his freshman year at Lafayette High School in Lexington, talks about playing Saturday's game with a heavy heart after his coach passed away Thursday morning following a two-year battle with cancer. Young and the rest of the Wildcats' offensive line played a key role in a 38-35 win over Vanderbilt, helping produce 458 yards of total offense.

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#65/67, Landon Young, Sr., OT

On the emotional first play of the game …

“The emotions just going through my mind were we just lost a member of our family. More than a member of our family, but we lost our coach and someone who was basically a father figure for every offensive lineman that has come through this program. So, we are going to honor him any way we can. Just because of the impact and influence he had on all of our lives, one of the toughest and greatest men I’ve ever had the chance of meeting in my life. We left a spot out there because we are missing one of our Wildcats today. Another thing, just to be able to have the opportunity to wear his number (65) just shows how much bigger than football it is. It was a blessing for me and a blessing for him to allow us to do it before he passed away, and a blessing that his family still wanted us to do it and they were here to see it. You know I want to go out there to play my game and lead anyway, but to be able to do it for a little extra reason with that number on me.”

On whose idea it was to start the game with an intentional penalty …

“It was kind of a cumulative effort. I know that the coaches definitely wanted to take a penalty and take a moment of silence for Coach (John Schlarman), show that we were missing a Wildcat. We actually decided right before in the pregame to actually bump (offensive guard) Luke (Fortner) to tackle for the very first play so that Coach Schlarman was a guard when he played here, and I know he’s always a guard at heart, so we wanted to leave a spot open for him to show where he played and represent that number well.”

On the difficulty of the past 48 hours …

“It was definitely hard, and it doesn’t get any easier talking about it. But we wanted to make sure we did what he wanted us to do every single day, and I know he’s sitting up there watching us right now, and you know having the mentality and grit that he had he would not have wanted us to sit down and feel sorry for ourselves for one second. The man never did it himself, even though he was pumping drugs into his body, and for goodness’ sake came out to practice not just hours after he had just gotten his first surgery a couple weeks ago. So, the last thing he would want us to do is sit back and feel sorry for ourselves and miss a game or practice, or not do this or that. That’s just his mentality. He’s a tough man, and he loved his game of football, and at the end of the day, one of the last conversations I had with him, ‘Coach Schlarman, why do you do this after all these surgeries? Why do you bring all this effort and attitude?’ His simple answer was ‘For the team.’ You can’t have a much better answer then that. A guy that’s truly committed to the game of football and is truly committed to each and every soul on that field, and what is best for us is growing us as men and being able to further us as a football player and have the best opportunity we can out there.”