LEXINGTON, Ky. — His dad was a clutch-shooting stalwart for “The Comeback Cats,” Kentucky’s 1998 men’s NCAA basketball champions.
His mom left a notable UK athletics legacy of her own.
Reed Sheppard?
Sure.
But the North Laurel High School junior-to-be boys’ basketball star — the son of ex-Wildcats basketball luminaries Jeff Sheppard and Stacey Reed — is not the only rising athlete with University of Kentucky ties for whom the above biography fits.
Lucas Padgett was born to be a Wildcat.
A true freshman offensive lineman on the 2021 UK football roster, the preferred walk-on is the middle of three children of ex-Wildcats power forward Scott Padgett and his wife, former Kentucky volleyball outside hitter Cynthia Dozier.
In the summer of 1994, Lucas Padgett’s parents first met as incoming UK freshmen when each turned up in the Memorial Coliseum training room seeking aid for an injured shoulder.
Scott Padgett and Dozier would soon become a couple. They have been one ever since.
From that starting point, Lucas Padgett thinks he was destined to one day wear Kentucky blue and white. “It definitely feels like that,” the 6-foot-4, 328-pound offensive lineman said last week at UK football Media Day. “It’s been a dream my whole life to be here.”
Yet if the college destination of Lucas Padgett feels preordained, the path he took to Lexington — disrupted by a cross-country move and the coronavirus pandemic — was unconventional.
While his dad was working as head men’s hoops coach at Samford University (2014-2020) in Birmingham, Ala., Lucas was developing on the gridiron.
By the end of his junior year at Homewood High School, Lucas Padgett had shown enough promise competing in Class 6A Alabama football to attract recruiting interest from Conference-USA programs. He had also demonstrated enough prowess in the classroom that Ivy League schools were interested.
Padgett’s football future was thrown into confusion, however, when his family moved some 1,265 miles west from Birmingham to Albuquerque, N.M. Cut loose as Samford head man, Scott Padgett had taken an assistant coaching job for 2020-21 at New Mexico.
If moving cross country before one’s senior year weren’t challenging enough, Lucas Padgett made that move amid a global pandemic. His new home, New Mexico, then adopted some of the more stringent COVID-19 containment policies of any state.
In The Land of Enchantment, high school football was shut down last fall.
As it turned out, Padgett earned his degree from La Cueva High School without ever stepping foot in a classroom. “I went the full (school) year online,” he says. “The school I graduated from, I never went to in person.”
Meanwhile, in the state he’d left behind, “Alabama, basically, got to play a full (high school football) season,” Lucas Padgett says. “(College) recruiting was a little more normal there than it would have been in New Mexico.”
As first the December and then the February college football signing periods came and went, Padgett was caught across the country from where he had built recruiting credibility — and with no senior-year video highlights to show colleges.
(This past April, New Mexico played an abbreviated high school football schedule).
That combined to leave Lucas Padgett in a bind as far as determining his football future.
In response to the uncertainty, a family conference was called.
“Cynthia and I, we sat down with Lucas and were like, ‘If you could go anywhere, where would you go?’ ” Scott Padgett recalls. “He didn’t even think; he said ‘Kentucky.’ ”
So the elder Padgett placed a phone call to UK Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart.
“I just said, ‘Hey, listen, my son is a really good football player,’ ” Scott Padgett recalls. “If it weren’t for (moving because of) my situation and COVID, I think he was, at a minimum, a Conference-USA scholarship player, if not more.”
Barnhart put the Padgetts in contact with the UK football recruiting apparatus.
Eventually, Kentucky offered Lucas Padgett a preferred walk-on opportunity.
“As soon as they said it, Lucas wanted to do it,” Scott Padgett says. “He said, ‘I’d love to bet on myself.’ ”
Thanks to Lucas Padgett’s strong resume in the classroom, he qualified for academic scholarship money at UK. “His being smart is helping my pocket,” Scott Padgett says.
Obviously, it’s difficult for a walk-on to make a competitive impact on a Southeastern Conference football program.
At Kentucky, the offensive line has become the program’s signature position group in recent years. If the recruiting geeks are correct about the potential of the O-linemen Mark Stoops, Eric Wolford and crew are bringing in, “The Big Blue Wall” should continue to stand strong in coming years.
Against those odds, Lucas Padgett brings impeccable Big Blue bloodlines and an overflowing desire to be a relevant Kentucky Wildcats athlete to the task of carving out a meaningful role at UK during his career,
“I know this isn’t going to be easy. It’s a great offensive line,” Lucas Padgett says. “But I’ve ended up at the school I’ve dreamed of my whole life. Now, the goal is to come in, work my butt off and be able to crack (the playing rotation).”
