Quinton Bohanna - UK Athletics Photo
Going into the season I thought Kentucky had the deepest roster I have seen in my 45 years covering UK football. Now we are going to start to find out with senior nose guard Quinton Bohanna out of this week’s game at Missouri with a knee injury. He’s not the first player to miss a game but he’s by far the most significant player to miss a game this year. He’s started 23 straight games and has the ability to control the middle of the field by himself. That’s rare and also one reason the UK defense has been so good the last two games.
“Quinton will be out for a bit. Nothing major, thank goodness for him and for us. I’m not sure how long that will be but he will be out this week,” Kentucky coach Mark Stoops said Monday.
He hurt his knee late in the first half of last week’s 34-7 win at Tennessee.
With Bohanna out, junior Marquan McCall — who missed the Mississippi State game for disciplinary reasons — will be the starter. He played in every game last season. Behind him will be true freshman Justin Rogers, the highest ranked recruit Stoops has signed at UK.
This is a big opportunity for McCall and I asked Stoops what he expected and if McCall was ready for that opportunity.
“I’m really excited for Marquan because he needs to, he needs to step up. Quite honestly, we need to put that kind of pressure on him and he needs to put that on himself to play at the level that he is capable of and I expect him to do that, I really do,” Stoops said.
What I wasn’t expecting was for Stoops to explain why losing a player like Bohanna or defensive lineman Josh Paschal the week before does more than impact what happens on the field.
“I just want our team to realize, and certainly if I’m saying this to you all it is truly authentic, but Josh got hurt and all he was doing was worrying about his team. Coaching his team, motivating his team, not sitting in the training room with a towel over his head, icing his knee, pouting about himself. The same with Quinton. He had no idea the severity of his knee injury. It hurt like heck and he definitely hurt some ligaments in his knee. It could have been blown out but he didn’t know at the time. All he was worried about was icing that thing, getting on the sidelines and coaching his team, and motivating his team and worrying about the win,” Stoops said.
“That is the championship mentality that we’re looking for and I love that. That is what we need from a lot of other guys and we have some of that, but I think that’s been the difference in the past couple of weeks, of that type of leadership, that type of motivation and selfless behavior from those guys. That’s something that we want to champion. That’s something we want to continue to build on and most of our team is that way. It’s amazing. That’s why we work so hard to protect that within our program.
“That’s why we point it out and talk about it and coach it. We want to model that behavior and there’s still selfishness. It’s hard. That’s the way society is, we understand that but we will continue to coach it out of (them). That pull from the top has to be much, much greater than the drag from below because there is some of that and we will continue to work on it and work on the guys at the top to continue to pull and elevate guys up from the middle or from the bottom. I think Q is another great example of that and that leadership that we’re going to miss.”
