What will UK football’s Senior Night look like in 2020, and who’s getting honored?
As most everything has in 2020, Senior Night will look a little different for the University of Kentucky football program on Saturday.
Eighteen current players and one former player will be recognized on the field before UK plays South Carolina, though they won’t get to walk out with their parents, who will be seated in the recruiting paddock. Players will enter the field in a position so that they can face and wave to them as they enter Kroger Field.
Worth noting, too, is that this ceremony could be merely that for some of the players honored: Every current player UK honors Saturday could, conceivably, return for the 2021 season thanks to a blanket eligibility waiver granted to all fall-sports athletes by the NCAA ahead of the 2020 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m waiting ‘til the season’s over and we’ll talk with some of the seniors,” head coach Mark Stoops said during his Monday news conference. “I’ve had brief conversations with some of them and we’ll address all that next week.”
Thirteen current starters will be recognized: wide receiver Josh Ali, nose guard Quinton Bohanna, punter Max Duffy, defensive back Brandin Echols, guard Luke Fortner, defensive tackle Phil Hoskins, center Drake Jackson, specialist Zach Johnson, tight end Justin Rigg, running back A.J. Rose, linebacker Jamar “Boogie” Watson, quarterback Terry Wilson and offensive tackle Landon Young.
Young, who played for Lafayette High School, which is just a mile or two from UK’s campus, reflected on his time at Kentucky in a Zoom teleconference with reporters on Tuesday.
“It’s no longer ‘just’ Kentucky football,” Young said. “It’s not ‘Oh, Kentucky, they have a football team’ or ‘Oh, wait ‘til basketball season.’ A bunch of people get excited for football and I think it’s a lot due to the classes early on, the 2015, 2016, 2017 classes, when we came in and wanted to make those changes. I definitely see a big change that is already made, and I hope that I can continue to help that out the rest of this year and leave those legacy points behind just like those other guys did, Josh Allen, Kash Daniel, T.J. (Carter).
“Those guys left legacies for these younger guys to grow onto, and I wanna be able to leave that so this program can continue to grow and not fall back to where it was.”
Kordell Looney, a defensive end who’s played in every game this season and started against Georgia, will be recognized along with defensive back Quandre Mosely, who’s played in eight games this season. Sawyer Smith, who started three games at quarterback last year, is one of two players being recognized (along with Jackson) who’s in the midst of a master’s degree program.
Two walk-ons — receiver Brett Slusher, who’s appeared on special teams in all nine games, and linebacker Jackson High, who played in the Alabama game — will also be among the honorees. Both hail from northern Kentucky; Slusher graduated from Beechwood High School, for whom he was a 2015 Class of the Commonwealth selection, while High graduated from Ryle High School, where he was a Second Team All-State selection following his senior season.
Alex King, a former linebacker who left the team ahead of the spring due to a laborious injury history but remained a UK student, will also be formally recognized Saturday. King enrolled ahead of the 2017 season and played in nine games as a redshirt freshman during the 2018 season.
Three ex-Cats also are on track to graduate with degrees this month. They are: Derrick Tatum, a cornerback who played from 1999 to 2002; Steve Johnson, a wide receiver who starred for the Wildcats in 2006 and 2007 before an eight-year NFL career; and Maxwell Smith, a quarterback who played from 2011-2013 and is currently an offensive graduate assistant on Stoops’ staff.
Next game
South Carolina at Kentucky
When: 7:30 p.m. Saturday
TV: SEC Network
Records: Kentucky 3-6; South Carolina 2-7
Radio: WLAP-AM 630, WBUL-FM 98.1
Series: South Carolina leads 18-12-1.
Last meeting: South Carolina won 24-7 on Sept. 28, 2019, at Columbia, S.C.
