Why it is Kentucky, not someone else, that keeps facing Georgia for the SEC East lead

This is the recruiting reality No. 20 Kentucky is up against when it battles No. 1 Georgia on Saturday night for the SEC East lead.

Over the past five years, the average national ranking of Georgia’s recruiting classes is 2.3. Over the same time period, UK’s signing classes have averaged a ranking of 24.8.

If depth charts hold up this weekend at Dooley Field at Sanford Stadium, this is how the Wildcats and Bulldogs will line up:

Of Georgia’s 22 starters, there will be two five-star recruits, 16 four-star recruits and four three-star recruits.

Among Kentucky’s 22 starters, there will be 11 four-star recruits and 11 three-star recruits (the Rivals.com recruiting database is the source for prospect rankings used in this column).

Yet even with that disparity in recruiting stars, Saturday night’s showdown of ranked teams will be the third meeting in the past six seasons between Mark Stoops’ Wildcats (5-0, 2-0 SEC) and Kirby Smart’s Bulldogs (5-0, 2-0 SEC) in which the top place in the SEC East standings is at stake.

In the context of recruiting, the paths that the Wildcats and Bulldogs programs take to keep ending up playing for the East Division lead are starkly different.

Fact is, Stoops and UK face a much steeper climb to put themselves in position to play for first place in the division than what is encountered by Smart — or any Dawgs head coach.

In building Georgia into the reigning, back-to-back national championship-winning program, Smart has been able to recruit, literally, from coast-to-coast. Star tight end Brock Bowers is from Napa, California; starting offensive lineman Xavier Truss is from Warwick, Rhode Island.

Yet the foundation of the Bulldogs’ football success starts with something Kentucky does not have — a bountiful in-state recruiting base.

Over its five recruiting classes from 2019 through 2023, Georgia signed 42 in-state recruits.

In the same five-year period, Kentucky inked 24 home-grown prospects.

What has allowed Stoops and UK to nevertheless face Georgia for high stakes with regularity in recent seasons can be attributed, broadly, to Kentucky’s recruiting resourcefulness.

Early in the Stoops coaching tenure, the UK head man and his ace recruiter, Vince Marrow, relied heavily on their home state of Ohio.

The first six recruiting classes inked by Stoops and Marrow, each a Youngstown, Ohio, product, contained a combined 41 players from the Buckeye State.

In Kentucky’s five most-recent recruiting classes, however, the Cats have signed only a combined 18 Ohio players.

To a degree unusual in UK’s modern football history, Stoops and his staff have been able to establish secondary recruiting pipelines into areas not traditionally mined by Wildcats recruiters.

UK’s recruiting reach into the state of Michigan is one of the big reasons Kentucky will again be playing Georgia for the SEC East lead.

A pipeline that started in the class of 2018 when ex-Cats assistant Steve Clinkscale signed now-former Wildcats linebacker DeAndre Square out of Detroit’s Cass Technical High School, has continued to send UK a steady trickle of high-level contributors.

Deone Walker, Kentucky’s 6-foot-6, 348-pound, All-America candidate defensive lineman, is another product of Cass Tech.

Maxwell Hairston, the UK cornerback who had two pick-six touchdowns in the Cats’ 45-28 win at Vanderbilt two weeks back, is from West Bloomfield, Michigan.

Jeremy Flax, the reigning SEC Offensive Lineman of the Week after recording five knock-down blocks in Kentucky’s 33-14 pasting of Florida last week, is from Robichaud High School in Dearborn Heights, Michigan.

Freshman tight end Khamari Anderson, one of only three UK true frosh who have already played in enough games in 2023 to forego a redshirt season, is yet another Cass Tech alumnus who found his way from Detroit to Lexington.

“We’ve had some great players from (Michigan),” Stoops said. “DeAndre (Square) and (Deone Walker), it’s been great.”

On Saturday night, this is what Kentucky will face.

In its past five recruiting classes, Georgia has signed 18 five-star recruits; Kentucky has signed one (that was Detroit product Justin Rogers, who became UK’s starting nose guard before transferring after last season to Auburn).

From 2019 through 2023, Georgia inked 75 four-star recruits; UK signed 35.

Over the same time frame, Georgia signed 35 three-star prospects; Kentucky inked 63.

It is Kentucky’s ability to evaluate and develop talent that is one half of the reason the Wildcats keep getting to play Georgia for the SEC East lead.

The other half of that equation is UK’s ability to open new pipelines into geographic areas that are rich with talent and relatively close to Lexington.

Kentucky’s capacity to, essentially, land one quality recruit a year from the state of Michigan has had — and is having — a profoundly positive impact on the Wildcats’ win/loss ledger.

That is why, over the weekend, it was no surprise that UK offered scholarships to at least seven high school underclassmen from Michigan.

Said Stoops: “Without a doubt — (Michigan has) been very good (to Kentucky). And we’ve got to get back in there.”

SEC East win trends

Overall wins by SEC East teams since the start of the 2018 season:

Georgia 65

Kentucky 45

Florida 44

Tennessee 38

Missouri 36

South Carolina 30

Vanderbilt 18

League victories by SEC East teams since the start of the 2018 season:

Georgia 39

Florida 25

Kentucky 22

Tennessee 21

Missouri 19

South Carolina 17

Vanderbilt 6