| Cats hunting bigger game | ||||
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 Perhaps no recruit was more indicative of how far Kentucky football's recruiting efforts have come and maybe where they are headed than Miami (Fla.) Central back Brandon Gainer.
A late addition to UK's 2010 recruiting crop, Gainer chose the Cats over some of the big boys of college football. "He was a big name there in south Miami," Joker Phillips said Wednesday. "We went through there in the spring and the buzz was about Brandon Gainer. For us to get him says a lot about the state of our program." After four consecutive bowl games, Rich Brooks said winning opens a lot of doors. Phillips agrees that the Cats' recent success has gotten their foot in the door of homes they may not have been welcome at before. In recent years, the UK coaching staff's modus operandi was always in mining the more underrated prospects and developing them once they got to campus as opposed to targeting higher ranked prospects. Since taking the reins and implementing Operation Win, it's Phillips desire to change some of that approach. "We do feel like we are pursuing a different guy," the coach said. "Our first year, we weren't getting this level of player. We could get in the top five, but were we getting into the top two? No. We just feel that the success that we've had is allowing us to get into better homes." But Phillips says going after some bigger fish also means being more patient. "If you want better players, you're going to have to wait it out. You're going to have to sweat it out," Phillips said. "Believe me, we've sweated it out a lot the last few weeks." But in the dog-eat-dog world of college football recruiting, nothing is ever over until the national-letter-of-intent comes through the fax machine. Even after a verbal commitment, schools continue to recruit and attempt to poach other school's recruits in the 11th hour. UK lost Greenville (Ga.) offensive lineman Kenarious Gates to Georgia and Cordova (Ala.) athlete Ryan Smith to Auburn while prying Cincinnati (Ohio) Lakota West tight end Alex Smith from North Carolina and Fairfax (S.C.) Allendale athlete Jerrell Priester from Vanderbilt. "It's the game within the game," Phillips said. "It was very tense. A lot of staying on the phone, telling the kids to be strong, pray about it, and if this is really what you want to do, just be strong with it. There are a lot of people tugging on them, but these last five or six guys that we signed were just us staying on the phone and being relentless." Many recruits that have gone on to sign with the Cats have cited the family-like atmosphere in Lexington. Phillips says that is one of UK's major selling points. "One of the things I think is that they feel our love," Phillips said. "They feel what we have here. They feel it from our players, our administration, and our fans. We just continue to reassure them that what they saw when they were here on their visit, it's still here. It hasn't gone anywhere. I think that was the difference as far as getting their faxes to come through this morning." In the future, Phillips is hoping guys like Gainer become more the rule than the exception. Comments (0)
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