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posted 10-27-2014 09:38 PM
Shortly after UK’s loss to No. 1 Mississippi State on Saturday night, Ashland Blazer running back Quinton Baker delivered a little good news directly to Wildcats Coach Mark Stoops.
Baker — one of the top football players in the state — told Stoops he was ready to announce his commitment to the Cats.
“He was hyped up!” Baker told the Herald-Leader on Sunday. “I just felt it in my heart it was right. I feel at home there. (Stoops is) doing a great job there. We are on an uprise.”
The UK head coach and his staff are certainly making sure that Kentucky’s top prospects stay home to play college football.
Baker is the sixth member of UK’s recruiting class of 2016, and four of those players are from Kentucky. He joins Henry Clay cornerback Davonte Robinson, Lafayette offensive lineman Landon Young and McCracken County athlete Zy’Aire Hughes in the class.
Those are four of the top five in-state prospects for 2016, according to the 247Sports rankings. The state’s No. 1 junior — Woodford County offensive lineman Drake Jackson — attended Saturday’s game and has publicly said that UK is the leader in his recruitment. He also has scholarship offers from Alabama, Tennessee and Vanderbilt, among others.
Baker and Jackson are close friends who communicate regularly and have even traveled together for recruiting trips. Adding Jackson to the class would give UK a clean sweep of the state’s best 2016 prospects, but Baker didn’t let on when asked to predict where his friend would end up.
“I’m not allowed to say,” he said with a laugh.
The addition of Baker was enough to push UK to No. 5 nationally in the early class rankings for 2016, according to 247Sports. The 5-foot-8, 175-pound prospect is considered the No. 29 running back in the class by Scout.com.
Baker described himself as an “all-purpose back,” and, though he hasn’t shown it off much as a high school player, he should be a pass-catching threat once he gets to college.
Rivals.com ranked Baker as the No. 4 offensive player at its camp in Columbus, Ohio, earlier this year. That event also included older prospects from the class of 2015, and the only running back who graded higher than Baker was Penn State commitment Miles Sanders, who is considered one of the nation’s top 50 players in the class of 2015.
Rivals analyst Woody Wommack said Baker showed off “blazing speed” at the camp.
“With his size, he has all-purpose back written all over him and he showed a nice ability to get open and make catches during the passing portion of the day,” Wommack wrote. “He finished a close second to Sanders when it came to picking the running back MVP.”
UK is building a formidable backfield for the future. When Baker arrives on campus in two years, Jojo Kemp will be a senior and Stanley “Boom” Williams and Mikel Horton will be juniors. There’s also the possibility that current Madison Southern star Damien Harris could be a sophomore for the Wildcats by then.
“That would be awesome,” Baker said of possibly sharing the backfield with Harris, who was also at Saturday’s game.
Baker’s father — former UK running back Al Baker — accompanied his son on Saturday’s visit to UK and was there when he committed to play for the Wildcats.
Quinton said his father didn’t push him toward UK but seemed pleased with the final decision.
“He said whatever makes me happy makes him happy.”
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