The son of an ex-UK basketball standout wants a chance to play football at Kentucky
Quick hitters from an unhappy nation:
21. Scott Padgett. The ex-Kentucky men’s basketball standout and his wife, former UK volleyball star Cynthia Dozier, have a son who would like to follow in his parents’ footsteps.
20. Lucas Padgett. A 6-foot-4, 285-pound, senior-to-be football center at Alabama’s Homewood High School, Lucas is the middle of Scott and Cynthia’s three children.
19. Recruiting interest. Scott Padgett says Conference-USA programs such as UAB and Middle Tennessee State plus Ivy League schools such as Harvard and Dartmouth have expressed interest in Lucas.
18. The school of his dreams. In his best life, Lucas would play college home games at Kroger Field. “It’s his dream school to come to Kentucky,” Scott Padgett says.
17. SEC interest? Alas, SEC schools are not yet wooing Lucas with great vigor. “A couple of contacts but nothing that is serious yet,” Scott Padgett says.
16. Logan Padgett. Scott Padgett’s oldest son, Logan, played basketball for his Dad last season at Samford. After the Birmingham school parted ways with Scott Padgett, Logan (2.4 points, 3.3 rebounds last season as a freshman) is in the transfer portal.
15. A Kentucky school? A 6-6, 205-pound forward, Logan Padgett has talked to Morehead State. “I think that’s probably the only one in the state,” Scott Padgett says. “He’s talked to several OVC (schools). He’s talked to a couple of Conference-USA teams. He’s talked to a couple of Big South (Conference) teams.”
14. Played a defensive role. Scott Padgett says his son’s offensive stats at Samford in 2019-20 were misleading. “For the role he played for us this year, he didn’t have to score a lot,” the ex-Samford coach says. “But, when you look it up, he was probably, statistically, our best defender.”
13. Matthew Mitchell. The Kentucky women’s basketball coach says he frequently gets asked the same question by fans: Why can’t UK attract taller post players? “I tell them, ‘It’s not from a lack of trying,’” Mitchell said.
12. Olivia Owens. Kentucky may finally have landed the post presence it has lacked with the announcement this week that Owens, a 6-foot-4 transfer from Maryland, is joining UK.
11. Class of 2018. Owens didn’t play much at Maryland (1.5 points, 1.3 rebounds in 16 games) as a freshman, then missed last season recovering from mononucleosis. But with her on board, UK now has in its program four players ranked in the top 34 in 2018 by ESPN HoopGurlz.
10. The countdown. Auburn transfer Robyn Benton was ranked No. 17; Tennessee transfer Jazmine Massengill No. 25; Rhyne Howard was No. 32; and Owens was No. 34.
(For the record, the player ranked No. 32 was criminally underrated).
9. Eddie Sutton. The former Kentucky men’s basketball coach, whose ill-fated, four-year tenure with UK ended in 1989, passed away May 23 at age 84.
8. Pursuing the UK job. When Sutton, then the Arkansas coach, came to Lexington in 1985 for the Final Four, the UK head coaching job was open and the rumor mill was abuzz.
7. Alan Stein. One of the local Final Four volunteers was Stein, who many years later brought the Lexington Legends to life. That weekend, however, Stein was serving as a driver for members of the National Association of Basketball Coaches.
6. Secret-agent man. “I got a call. It said, ‘You need to come pick up Coach Sutton. He’s got a meeting and you are sworn to secrecy,’” Stein recalls. “It was fascinating all the secret meetings he was having.”
5. Kenny Walker. As Stein drove Sutton to various job interviews with UK officials, “he asked me a lot of questions. We talked a lot about Kenny Walker,” Stein says of the mid-1980s UK star. “I almost got the impression that whether he would take the job or not might have to do with whether Kenny Walker would stay (for his senior year).”
4. Racial climate. In queries that have special poignancy in our current, distressing times, Stein says Sutton “asked some questions around the fringes of race. A subtle question about whether Lexington was really a Southern city. How impactful were African-American (players) on the basketball team by then?”
3. Lexington life. Sutton also asked “about the style of Lexington, the pace,” Stein says. “Did we consider ourselves to be a big city or a small town?”
2. The first to know. After he left one of the meetings with UK, Stein says Sutton got back in the car smiling. Says Stein: “He said, ’Well, you can’t tell anybody this, but I think they may think that I might be a good coach here.’”
1. Didn’t forget. In the four years Sutton spent coaching Kentucky, Stein says the coach remembered his Final Four driver. “We didn’t become friends,” Stein says. “But he did remember me.”
