La Cueva’s Padgett going to Kentucky
It was perhaps just meant to be that Lucas Padgett would don Wildcat blue.
His parents both attended the University of Kentucky, and both were athletes there.
On Monday night, La Cueva High School’s center verbally committed to Kentucky football, which has extended to him a preferred walk-on opportunity, or PWO.
“Kentucky has always been my dream school,” said the 17-year-old Padgett, who is 6-feet-4 and 290 pounds.
An appearance late last month at the Blue-Grey All-American Bowl in Arlington, Texas, certainly helped him get some film available. It was the first time he had played since his junior season in the fall of 2019 at Homewood High in Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham. “It was a really great experience to get back on the field for the first time since my junior season ended. I feel like I played well against a lot of really great competition out there,” he said.
Padgett said he had no official offers; he said he did speak to the University of New Mexico, where father Scott is a men’s basketball assistant coach.
But he couldn’t pass up the chance to make Kentucky his alma mater and to join the SEC. Scott (basketball) and mother Cynthia (volleyball) are former Wildcat athletes.
“I’m super excited about it,” said “I lived in Alabama for eight years, and football is absolutely huge down there. … To get a chance to play there, that’s something most people would leap at the opportunity to do.”
He was offered late last week by the Wildcats, he said. And with his having no season last fall with the Bears — and no guarantee of an abbreviated season this spring — he jumped at the opening.
“It definitely was a concern,” Padgett said. “Just being worried about not having a senior year to be recruited, not knowing if I’m gonna have a senior year.”
The Padgetts moved to Albuquerque last July.