Dontaie Allen (11) and teammates celebrate Tuesday's win over Vanderbilt where Allen scored 14 points. (Vicky Graff Photo)
You’ve heard the story before. Not big enough, not fast enough, not athletic enough. Just can’t compete at a high level. That’s the story UK fans have heard now for these past 12 years from this University of Kentucky basketball coaching staff. Sure, a couple of times fans have been thrown a bone, such as offering a scholarship to Dominique Hawkins and Derek Willis back in 2013. But that’s pretty rare.
It usually only happens when this coaching staff finds out that other Power Five teams like the UofL Cardinals might be sniffing around. Then, every once in awhile, they seem to find a scholarship for a Kentucky high school player.
Dontaie Allen is the most recent case in point. He’s a Kentucky kid from Falmouth. Mr. Basketball for the state of Kentucky in 2019 because he only averaged 43 points and 14 rebounds per game in his injury shortened senior season at Pendleton County. As a junior he averaged 32 points and 11 rebounds per game while shooting 59 percent from the floor and 40 percent from 3-point range. He was ranked as the No. 92nd best player in the country by the Recruiting Services Consensus Index and he is the first Kentucky kid to get a scholarship from UK since 2013.
But this article isn’t about Dontaie Allen and his game saving shooting ability that propelled him into the Big Blue Nation spotlight on a Saturday night in Starkville, Mississippi. No, this article is about all the other Dontaie Allen’s that might have been passed over by this Kentucky coaching staff for other nationally ranked players that either didn’t stay to play or never panned out in the first place.
In 2016 UK had the opportunity to offer a scholarship to Quentin Goodin from Campbellsville in Taylor County. Goodin was a Top 100 player out of high school with offers from UofL, Florida, Indiana, Michigan and Tennessee among others and at the time said he would seriously consider UK if it offered. Unfortunately it never offered.
Goodin went on to play at Xavier University for Chris Mack, the current Louisville coach, and had a good career for the Musketeers. As a junior he was the point guard on a team that won the Big East Conference and received a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. He finished as the fourth all-time career assist leader at Xavier.
Then there is the interesting case of Taveion Hollingsworth. He was Kentucky Mr. Basketball in 2017, played at Dunbar High School in Lexington and Kentucky was his dream school. Right in the backyard of the University of Kentucky Hollingsworth, as a senior, averaged 28 points, seven rebounds and four assists per game. He was a three-star player that received a lot of interest from mid-major schools including Western Kentucky.
But here’s the interesting part of Hollingsworth’s story. UK did offer him a scholarship, a “conditional” one. What, you might ask, is that? I’ll let Taveion tell it. “UK told me, if you are willing to wait (and sign in the spring), then we can give you a scholarship,” Hollingsworth said. “I think they wanted the people they (really) wanted first, then I would come after that.”
So the Kentucky coaching staff played another game of “maybe we want you, maybe we don’t.” No player of Hollingsworth’s caliber wants to be a second choice and rightfully so.
He said, “I don’t like to be anybody’s backup plan, WKU told me they would give me a scholarship on point. So that’s what I chose.”
Since then Hollingsworth has been a four year starter at Western Kentucky and was a First Team All-Conference USA selection last season.
And of course the list goes on and on.
Don’t forget KyKy Tandy, Camron Justice, Travon Faulkner and many other high level players that have played high school basketball in Kentucky with no interest from the Wildcats.
And of course, some will say, why should UK be interested in those players? After all, they all ended up at somewhere like Western Kentucky or Xavier or even another SEC school like Auburn or Vanderbilt. But that’s exactly the point. All of those players would have stayed on the roster for four years at UK. They could have been a steady talent base, similar to Dominique Hawkins and Derek Willis, that would have allowed for player continuity over time — something that this year’s Kentucky team sorely needs.
So don’t get me wrong, one or two talented players from Kentucky aren’t going to eliminate selfish play or poor coaching or even simplistic offensive schemes, but they could help add some desire and fight to the players that arrive from all over the country with no knowledge of what playing for Kentucky basketball really means.
Players from Kentucky understand what it means to play basketball for the people of the Commonwealth. They know the history, they realize they are playing for every kid from Pikeville to Paducah that has ever shot on a tilted rim with no net, on a blacktop driveway (if they were lucky) believing they would someday play for the Wildcats.
That kind of heart for Kentucky basketball doesn’t come from growing up in Detroit or Atlanta or Houston. It comes from watching your heroes playing in Rupp Arena or on the road in the SEC, knowing they will make a 3-point shot or get a steal in the last few seconds to once again seal the victory for the Wildcats.
It’s exactly what Dontaie Allen did for UK last Saturday night. If nothing else, having a few more Kentucky kids like Allen on the roster could be a breath of fresh air for what we are currently watching unfold in 2020-2021 Wildcat season.
