What is Vince Marrow’s message to players who are still on the fence about Kentucky?
VINCE MARROW
On what excited him most about the class: “I think just getting the young men that we got. We addressed some needs. I was looking forward as recruiting coordinator getting Terry Wilson and adding depth. I don’t know what Coach Stoops addressed, I got in here late, but we’re still on some guys that we want to finish out with. It’s been a very exciting day. If you would’ve told me we would’ve signed 20 guys this early I wouldn’t have believed it because in the beginning a lot of coaches weren’t even aware of this early signing period. I was very excited and I know our coaches were too.”
On what he likes about the tight ends: “I think we hit a home run with these two guys. The last time I was excited like this is when we got C.J. (Conrad). We’ve got two guys that are in the 6-7, 6-5 range that are in the 240s right now. They can run, they can block. I was a little worried about these guys signing because there’s a lot of schools trying to come after them, a lot of schools, Power Five schools that are in the playoffs, top-25 schools, top-25 programs. But I think they seen the need here with Greg (Hart) graduating and C.J., not knowing if he was gonna stay or leave and then also his injury. But make no mistake about it: These two guys were big, big needs. Our whole staff, even the defensive staff, are very excited about these guys. I don’t know if you’ve seen them. They were here for an official visit this last week and they look just as good as Justin (Rigg) right now. It’s gonna be exciting in that room for the next couple years.”
On if he thinks the early signing period will become a bigger deal in the future: “Yes. I think they heard about it, but they just didn’t think ... In high school, especially in Ohio, they have one big day cause other sports are signing. And they don’t wanna have one day for these guys and then come back in February. But I think they seen that there was a need to have it. Even for me it’s like the first time doing it. Next time you’ll have a good experience next year. I think it’s gonna be, I think they may do away with the February one. I think it’s gonna be in December and that’s fine with me.”
On what the pitch to Terry Wilson was after losing a quarterback late: “See, I’m gonna let y’all in on a little secret. One thing you don’t know about me is I’ve always got a guy, if we think we may lose or a guy’s not all the way committed. And I’ve gotta give Dan Berezowitz credit on this too. We watched Terry even when we had the other kid signed. I love that other kid, good family, but when you look — last year we had a quarterback de-commit. And then we got Stephen (Johnson). Well, Terry’s film don’t lie. He’s fast. He can throw. And I told him the need we had. We was graduating Stephen. We had Drew (Barker) here, we had some quarterbacks here but there’s an opportunity for him to win the job. He understood what we had. One thing that sold him was the players that we had recruited in the past that we had in skill positions and offensive linemen. We put it up to say, ‘Listen. These guys had all these schools recruiting them. They got so many starts on the O-Line. You ain’t gonna be running for your life and that’s just gonna be an experienced O-Line when you come in here. And then you’ve got experienced tight ends, you’ve got an All-SEC running back, you get Dorian Baker back. I just think he seen the opportunity and said, ‘OK, this is where I wanna go. We really sold it on him, and his mom and his family and I think he seen it and said, ‘Hey, I wanna be a part of BBN.’”
On Terry Wilson’s leadership and personal qualities: “I think this when you’re recruiting a kid and he comes on an official visit. A lot of kids first of all ain’t gonna bring their girlfriends, I’m just telling you, they’re not gonna bring their girlfriends because they probably wanna hang out. He did not hang out. He wanted to spend time around his girlfriend. He spent time with his mom. He’s just a high-character kid. He loves God. I’m not saying he’s perfect, but you can just tell the young man is all about business. He made a mistake the first time when he went to Oregon and that didn’t work out, and I think he just matured from that. He’s only 19 years old but he seems, when you talk to him it seems like he’s in his 20s. He’s a very mature young man. I seen that. When I’m recruiting kids I look at every little thing and I noticed he did not wanna hang out. He did not wanna do nothing outside of the normal thing you do with players. That told me a lot about him.”
On his message to the guys who didn’t sign today: “Probably the 2013 (guys) you would be begging for, we to a point now where we ain’t taking a back seat to nobody. We want guys that want to be here. There’s some situations at why maybe two guys didn’t sign and we working on that right now. But how can you not want to be a part of this? You seen what we have to offer. This is our second year going to back-to-back bowls. We keep improving. My message to them is, ‘You’ve seen the fanbase here.’ They know what it’s all about. If there’s a better place out there then they need to go there. I know the 20 guys that signed today are big time players. We had schools tugging at them guys last night. I was up till about 12:30 a.m. last night had to be up again at 6 a.m. for the recruiting thing. We want guys that want to be here. That’s point blank. We want guys that want to be here.”
On which will be early enrollees: “I don’t know off hand. Of course you’ve got the junior college guys that are coming in and I wanna say Stanley Garner, I wanna say two of them kids from Florida. And then you’ve got (DeAndre) Square. Square is coming in. So it’s about five guys.”
On if it’ll be weird to have seven weeks to get three or four guys: “I love that (laughs). Let me just say this. You know how we recruit so now you’re saying we’ve only got to zero in on four or five guys. I like that. I like our odds. We’ve got some big time guys out there that almost were ready to sign today and they got until Friday. But if they don’t sign I feel very confident that we will land these guys.”
On if it’s tough knowing how many spots to keep open: “Coach Stoops, you would like to sign all your class but it’s kinda like you wanna have at least three or four in your pocket cause you get guys that wanna transfer, you get guys that just for some reason fall through the cracks. You’d like to have three or four. Having five right now in our pocket, I’m very excited about it. We get to zero in on five guys with seven weeks. That’s good. I love them odds with us, focusing on five guys.”
On if it’s an advantage to start on the 2019 class: “I see it the same way if 100 percent of your class signs in December. But we got five guys to focus on and then the rest of 2019. One thing we always did here, I think you guys remember going back to 2013, when everyone was excited about being No. 26 or whatever it was, and I told you guys we were almost 50 percent done with our 2014 class and I’d say it’d be higher than that class and y’all looked at me like I was crazy. But we actually did. And so right now 2019 in some of our main states is a very strong year. It’s good to get on them guys now, but we still gotta finish off the 2018 class.”
On if he and Mark Stoops tag team some visits together: “We go in a lot of these homes together and here’s what I say. When I’m recruiting a kid, I’ve been knowing Mark since I was 9 years old now, 10 years old. His uncle was my older brother’s high school coach so we met each other playing football on the sidelines at the high school. When I go recruit kids, I tell their parents, ‘Look, I know this guy who I’m recruiting for. There’s a lot of guys who go recruit for other coaches across the country and they really don’t know them. They’re just recruiting for the guy. I know this guy, I know what he’s all about, I know what he stands for, I know where he comes from. I just think it’s very powerful, and I think the parents feel it because a lot of these parents do homework. They look and say ‘You’ve been knowing Coach Stoops. You grew up together.’ Yes we have. I know him. It’s easier for me to recruit for him and recruit about who he is and it tells them parents when they do their homework they say, ‘This guy’s very sincere.’ But I mean what I be saying about him. Now, I ain’t always gonna tell you everything I know about him. I’ve got people who want to know what his nickname was and I still never told nobody that. But I do know him and I think these parents realize that.”
On if kids and parents are more savvy today: “Yeah because you guys. Because of Twitter, because of media. I think, I just imagine when I was getting recruited when there was no Twitter. There was no, I’m still not up to date. What do they call that? Snapchat and all that stuff. I mean they are so, you can leave a kid’s home, you’re recruiting a kid in Florida, leave his home, and that conversation would be on Twitter — what you said — before you land in Ohio to see another kid. So what I tell coaches, ‘You better be honest.’ If you’re saying, ‘Hey, you’re my No. 1 guy’ here and then you go to this guy and say No. 1, they would know it. That’s how a lot of people loose kids now. Because media, social media, is really driving recruiting now. I don’t worry about it cause I’m gonna be honest with these kids. I’m telling them what it’s all about. But to answer your question, yes.”
On he’s gonna tell us his nickname: “No. He’d kill me (laughs).”
On what if a really good player wanted to know Stoops’ nickname: “Well, probably the three we signed today, I ain’t gonna single out guys. You guys can probably figure out who them three are. When those three we signed today had said, ‘Coach, if you tell me his nickname, I’ll commit,’ then I would’ve told them in Spanish, (German), all kind of different languages. …
On getting Michigan signees: “If you remember, before we hired (Steve) Clink(scale), I had Ohio, Pennsylvania and Detroit because Detroit was close to where I went to school at Toledo and I coached there. I knew when we got Clink, he did a good job in Illinois and Cincinnati. That’s a good program. We got some good players out of there and I think we’re going to stay in there because ’19 is very strong class. We just — it’s part of the six-hour radius of our recruiting — I just think that’s going to be a mainstay there.”
On what about this class sticks out compared to past classes: “Probably one thing is a lot of guys from a lot of big-time high school programs. And probably a lot of two-way players. And I want to say we got two all-Americans in this class. And we’ve signed some of the other guys. This is a class where it’s very top, guys were ranked pretty high in their state. If you’d asked me, I’d say a lot of two-way players, guys who played both ways. And that’s very unselfish for their teams.”
On if there’s anything about basketball players that makes them good at football: “Yes. Yeah. I just think even going back to when Nick Saban was recruiting me, his philosophy was he wanted basketball — he used to love going to basketball games. And I know when me and Mark are on the road, and the guys we’re recruiting, if they’re basketball players we ask, ‘Hey, when’s your game. We’re going to come do the home visit when you’ve got a game.’ You can just see guys move. And Eddie, that’s what sold him on Benny. I knew what type of player he was, but he seen Benny play basketball and I tell Benny he isn’t a great basketball player, but he’s seen him move, playing point guard, playing defense. You see guys’ hand-eye coordination, change of direction. I wish a lot of guys played basketball. That’s when you get a true evaluation of how athletic they are.”
On if that gives a leg up on other schools without a good basketball program: “Aw man, that’s been a killer. (Calipari) has been — I took Darian, Bates and Upshaw — it was their official weekend and we were driving from the hotel and I was like, ‘You know what? I called (Robic) and said, ‘What are you guys doing? And he said, ‘We’re having a shootaround.’ And a buddy of mine is Kevin Knox Sr. and he was in town. I went over there and they were having shootaround and Cal gave us a tour of the new locker room. Cal’s been awesome. He’s been very effective in a lot of guys that we signed because I remember we took guys to junior days and we had basketball games. … And when they get down there and see Cal, they look at him like he’s a God or something. Then you see how down to earth he is. And he’s taken me and coach (George Raveling). ... It was this weekend that he took us around and them three guys, I mean, Darian Kinnard don’t say much and he was looking at Coach Cal and Kevin Knox, meeting them guys and saying, ‘Wow.’ Cal does a good job with us. I can’t thank them guys enough.”
This story was originally published December 20, 2017 at 3:09 PM with the headline "What is Vince Marrow’s message to players who are still on the fence about Kentucky?."