On3 Roundtable: Kentucky football stealing attention from basketball amid tumultuous offseason

It’s been a tale of two offseasons for Kentucky football and men’s basketball. While the men’s hoops squad is in the midst of a turbulent summer with few players on the roster, Mark Stoops and Co. have turned it up on the recruiting trail.

That, plus some transfer portal additions, have fans feeling good about Kentucky football. KSR’s Drew Franklin explained in an On3 Roundtable with On3’s J.D. PicKell.

“People are very excited. It’s partially, not that we like this, but the basketball program slipping a little bit right now. So a lot of the attention has been switched over to football. Football has been getting a lot of good news this spring,” Franklin said. “Stoops and his recruiting buddy, Vince Marrow, just dominated the portal. They’ve been so good at that. They went out and hit every position of need. We’re mentioning Devin Leary, he’s the big one. But Ray Davis out of Vandy at running back, Kentucky finally has a roster that, on paper, is looking like they can really do something that hasn’t been done around these parts.”

Along with Leary and Davis, Kentucky landed a number of other potential immediate contributors via the portal.

Defensive lineman Keeshawn Silver, coming from North Carolina, was formerly a five-star recruit. Defensive backs Jantzen Dunn (Ohio State) and J.Q. Hardaway (Cincinnati) have a shot to play early and often. On the offensive line, Ben Christman (Ohio State), Courtland Ford (USC), Tanner Bowles (Alabama) and a number of others offer reinforcements at a spot where the Wildcats badly need them.

Couple those additions with a Top 50 class for 2023 and a strong start to the 2024 recruiting cycle — Kentucky already has a commitment from quarterback Cutter Boley, a Top 100 prospect and the best player in state. That’s on top of two other offensive linemen committed with a big few months of recruiting on the horizon for Kentucky.

And this is on top of bringing back Liam Coen, the offensive coordinator who led to much of Kentucky’s offensive success in 2021. He spent 2022 with the Los Angeles Rams.

“The fanbase is thrilled and already counting down to the fall. It’s just a matter of seeing how it all pans out. Liam Coen’s back, excited to run back some of that magic. Stealing a coordinator from the Rams, when you’re at Kentucky that’s a pretty big deal. So the excitement is high here and we’re counting down to the fall,” Franklin said.