State of 2023 Recruiting
- Thread starter Canned Heat
- Start date
Gilbert is the 15 best DT so him and Gadson would be a nice duo for us in this class at the DT and DE positions.
I think someone referred to Goodwin as a rotation gut a while back.
From what I could find on past Twitter: Jackson Bunn, 6'3 280 from Alabama, Max Ishmael, 6'4 but no weight listed, from Lexington(wondering if he is from the family of Chill Ishmael, UK basketball player from decades ago?), Braiden Myers, 6'4 300 from Somerset, Kyle Mixon, 6'4 305 from Warner-Robbins, GA. Only place I saw these guys listed was Twitter, very quiet otherwise. Also found PWO offers for a LB and 2 WRs.
Gilbert just committed to UK
To answer PWO question. UK 2023 PWOs so far, AFAIK-
Lincoln Billiter, TE/LB, Pikeville, KY
Jackson Bunn, OL, Oxford, AL
Darius Cannon, slotR, Gainesville, GA
Max DeGraff, P/K, Lexington, KY
Shane Hamm, QB, Akron, OH
Walker Himebach, LS, Monument, CO
Max Ishmael, OL, Lexington, KY
Kyle Mixon, OL, Warner Robbins, GA
Jackson Moore, K, Waxhaw, NC
Braiden Myers, OL, Pulaski, KY
Nicholas Pearson, OL, Roswell, GA
Abelardo Reza, OL, Eminence, KY
Carson Wright, LB, Pikeville, KY
For anyone having more granular questions, all of these players can be googled.
Our student assistant coach Drake Jackson recruited most of the offensive linemen on this list.
Lincoln Billiter, TE/LB, Pikeville, KY
Jackson Bunn, OL, Oxford, AL
Darius Cannon, slotR, Gainesville, GA
Max DeGraff, P/K, Lexington, KY
Shane Hamm, QB, Akron, OH
Walker Himebach, LS, Monument, CO
Max Ishmael, OL, Lexington, KY
Kyle Mixon, OL, Warner Robbins, GA
Jackson Moore, K, Waxhaw, NC
Braiden Myers, OL, Pulaski, KY
Nicholas Pearson, OL, Roswell, GA
Abelardo Reza, OL, Eminence, KY
Carson Wright, LB, Pikeville, KY
For anyone having more granular questions, all of these players can be googled.
Our student assistant coach Drake Jackson recruited most of the offensive linemen on this list.
Last edited:
Kendrick Gilbert out of Indianapolis has signed with our 2023 class. UK flipped Gilbert from Purdue. Very significant signing.
Gilbert represents the first significant recruiting victory for Coach Stewart outside the state of GA. Gilbert vindicates Coach Stewart's recent prediction on "The Locker".
At this moment, Gilbert represents the third-highest ranked defensive prospect and fourth-highest ranked overall prospect in UK's 2023 recruiting class. Gilbert is the #3 ranked hs prospect in the state of IN.
Gilbert gives UK recruiters an "in" at Cathedral hs, one of the better producers of hs football prospects in the midwest.
Gilbert (along with Tavion Gadson) is the second interior defensive lineman to join UK's 2023 recruiting class.
Gilbert represents the first significant recruiting victory for Coach Stewart outside the state of GA. Gilbert vindicates Coach Stewart's recent prediction on "The Locker".
At this moment, Gilbert represents the third-highest ranked defensive prospect and fourth-highest ranked overall prospect in UK's 2023 recruiting class. Gilbert is the #3 ranked hs prospect in the state of IN.
Gilbert gives UK recruiters an "in" at Cathedral hs, one of the better producers of hs football prospects in the midwest.
Gilbert (along with Tavion Gadson) is the second interior defensive lineman to join UK's 2023 recruiting class.
Nice, also noticed a Darius Cannon was added to our commitment list yesterday. Has not received an evaluation on any of the recruiting sites that I could find. 5'9" WR out of Georgia.
I love the Gilbert get...I hated not having much interior DL in this class...and then we get Gadsen late into the first signing day window and now Gilbert later.
I assume Gilbert is growing into a DT...maybe NG but he's not near the size UK likes at NG. Great job Marrow and Stoops to real this one in.
I assume Gilbert is growing into a DT...maybe NG but he's not near the size UK likes at NG. Great job Marrow and Stoops to real this one in.
We have the 17th most 4* commits in this class. Every school we are behind has won or played for a national title in most of our lifetimes (except TAMU).
We are also ranked 26th overall now. Good enough for the best class ever, pre-Stoops. Or the 3rd best of Stoops' tenure.
This was a "down year".
We are also ranked 26th overall now. Good enough for the best class ever, pre-Stoops. Or the 3rd best of Stoops' tenure.
This was a "down year".
Wonder how much Spencer would move the class up?
If that Cannon kid is counted towards our current 20 commits, then he would bump Cannon (unrated) off the list and replace him with a high 3*. Probably wouldn't change much, though. A slight total points boost and a slightly higher star average, but nothing major.*
That said, I still want Spencer regardless of his ranking or affect on our class ranking
Edit: We would go from a 3.3 star average to a 3.45. That would move us up 7 spots in the star average rankings, one spot above UL.
We would get an additional 90 total points, which would move us up one spot to 25th overall. This assumes no one below us and the team directly above us (FSU) gets enough new players to overtake our point total.
Last edited:
Baa-aam!! Love this and needed some HUGE football news today!!!!
Love the big DL. Haven't gotten to talk to Coach Stewart for a while, but he has to be stoked for this class and the transfers.
Go CATS!
Thank you for this. Did not see it anywhere. Just thought I needed to check today and got that Gilbert surprise
Big time, also big DL transfer has 3 yrs.
Great news on Gilbert. Be nice if we can get Woo later today
That would be real nice, some UL people seem to feel good about him going there but some seem to believe he will be a Cat.
Gilbert was offered by Notre Dame, Tennessee, Penn State and Michigan among a lot of others. Says he will be a true DT in our system.
Kendrick Gilbert has 5 SEC offers. There is no doubt about his quality as a prospect.
The question will be which DL position he plays. Probably DT. But if TreVonn Rybka and Octavious Oxendine can play 5 technique, I'm sure Gilbert could too. So positional need may become a factor. Either way, this is a big acquisition for us. Brad White has built a formidable defensive unit, and this class will help keep it that way.
Rather quietly, Coach Stewart is becoming a key recruiter for us.
Yeah, whenever they say DT it could be DT or DE in our system. Because he is athletic with quickness will be flexible.
Kudos to Drake Jackson for his work in securing these PWO OL. Hopefully he'll stick with the coaching fraternity, could be a really important addition in the future.
I suspect Drake Jackson would be a strong coach for us, if that is what he wants to do. He is smart, he was an all conference player, and he has had the experience of an NFL camp. Not every good player makes a good coach. In fact, the correlation isn't very strong at all. But Drake's intangibles are off the charts, and his football IQ is high.
He 💯 wants to be a coach. He had a NFL team try to sign him and he weighed his options and decided to go into coaching. He works as hard or harder then any coach they have
Well, Rivals has mistakenly added one of our “0” rated walk-ons to our list. Our average Star average (without the pwo) is bumping into 3.5!
Last edited:
And he might be a record-setter, here.
But as it stands, it looks like his pwo commitment in close proximity in time to NDS has fooled someone into including him in our schollie averages.
Unless he is full ride player . . . .
4.67 would explain why he's a WO.
Yeah, at that size would think a lot faster. Said he was one of the players that kind of stood out at a Rivals combine.
Negative. Not a scholarship signee. PWO. It is not unusual for online sources to screw this kind of thing up, especially on signing day. While trying to be the first to report, sources sometimes make mistakes or post without verification. That's why I take everything with a grain or two of salt.
As a fan who generally takes the minority point of view on class rankings, let me just make some very general observations here.
Our 2023 class has taken criticism from our fan base. All along, my feeling has been that the criticisms are mainly generated by two arbitrary narratives. The first of these narratives comes from the generic instate UK fan who places a big priority on the UK-UL "rivalry". UL is not an SEC member, but some fans especially in central and western KY interact often with UL fans and get tired of being punked by them. I get this. I have relatives in the western part of the state who can't even say hello or ask me how I am doing before picking out something about UK sports and digging me about it. It doesn't usually bother me, but I admit it gets old. You begin to wonder whether UL fans have anything else going on in their lives. But OTOH, they wonder the same thing about us, which is why all UL fans love to needle UK fans. The point is that if UK's recruiting class is rated below UL's class, we get punked about it by UL fans. This doesn't bother me at all because Stoops keeps beating the snot out of UL on the field. But I know it bothers some of our fans. My advice would be, when your UL friends try to punk you, just remind them of the final score of the last game. But don't try to judge our recruiting classes by comparing them to UL's classes. It just doesn't make any sense, and I will explain why.
The second narrative is the fan who studies player ratings and class rankings as if they are literally predictive of the program's success or failure. Some clearly believe that a recruiting class cannot be "good" unless it achieves a certain internet ranking level. Way back when UK was the doormat of SEC football, UK fans became aware of the "garbage in/garbage out" principle. In other words, if you sign a class of bad athletes, no amount of coaching can make them into a good SEC football team. And, as far as it goes, that is true. So some of our fans study the class ranking as if it is a giant bank vault door holding UK out of the top tier of the SEC. A subgroup of these fans make a big deal whenever they perceive Mark Stoops isn't doing a good enough job as a recruiter. Yes, there are still some UK football fans who don't like Coach Stoops and never will. These folks take every opportunity to criticize Stoops. Happily, their numbers have been decreasing these last 5 years or so.
There are different ways to assess a recruiting class. One can rank classes based on the average player rating. Or based on the total of the player ratings. Some methods penalize a class for having less than 25 signees, which does not seem realistic in the age of the transfer portal. Websites tend to rank hs signees on one scale and then rank inbound transfers seperately. When ranking transfers, some also take into account the outbound talent that leaves through the portal. But some just take into account inbound transfers. So there is not a uniform standard.
Even if there was a uniform standard for ranking classes, the problem is that online analysts are generally not looking for the same mixture of qualities that a coach sees in a recruit. Each team has different roster needs. Recruiting players for an SEC roster can be a different ball of wax compared to recruiting in the ACC or the AAC. Each coaching staff has a unique perspective because they have their own roster with its own strengths and weaknesses. Each staff holds different funds of experience in developing players. Each staff recruits different regions of the country, so national player ratings may not be directly relevant.
Coach Stoops has recruited and developed 7 All Americans and (by my count) 21 all SEC players. Stoops' All Americans-
Logan Stenberg
Josh Allen
Bunchy Stallings
Benny Snell
Lynn Bowden
Max Duffy
Darian Kinnard
Fans who study our roster know that some of our star players came to UK after being heavily recruited while others like Josh Allen, Bunchy Stallings, Benny Snell, and Logan Stenberg were lightly recruited. Josh Allen contributed absolutely nothing to the ranking of our 2015 recruiting class and then became the best college defensive player in the entire country. Leading up to our 2015 season, were any of you excited to have Josh Allen on our team? Stoops gets credit for finding these winning players, regardless of their ratings at the time.
The goal of football is to outscore the opponent and win the game. Recruiting is important, but development and game prep are also important. You can take the highest ranked player and still get nowhere with him unless he is smart and motivated. (Has anyone been watching and learning from Kiyaunta Goodwin? Michael "Donut" Drennen? Jason Hatcher?) No points are given on the scoreboard for the class ranking. At the end of the day, is the team winning games or not? If the team is winning, then recruiting is keeping the program on the right track. If two teams play one another annually, and one keeps beating the other over and over, that answers the question about which team is getting the job done on the recruiting trail.
Most high-school kids aren't running 4.5s. They arent physically mature yet.
Its mainly the top college /future NFL players running 4.5 and better.
He did run a fast shuttle for any age. 3.8 something.
Very true. We should not have any illusions that Juice Johnson or Blake Bone were speedsters. They weren't. That's why the top SEC teams at that time did not offer them. But Darius Cannon is a 5'9" slot receiver who runs 4.67. We already have a lot of slot receivers, and all of them run faster than 4.67. Dekel Crowdus, Jordan Anthony, Brandon White, and Anthony Brown are jets. We don't need to use anymore scholarships on the position. But we could ideally use one more skilled outside receiver from the portal, if there is room. Right now, our roster is full.
