It was announced Friday that freshman wide receiver Daryl Collins will miss the entire 2011 season after he dislocated his right kneecap in practice earlier this week. Collins will have surgery on Thursday, Sept 1, the same day as UK’s season opener against Western Kentucky. The Gadsden, Ala. native will use his redshirt this season in order to preserve a year of eligibility at UK.

Collins was competing for playing time on the outside as a freshman and looked to be a play-maker on offense for head coach Joker Phillips.

“(Daryl) was right on the verge of whether or not he was going to be able to help us,” Phillips said. “We were going to continue to work with him and it was going to be hard to make that decision for the first game because we wanted to make sure that he was going to play enough snaps to play. We were going to continue to work him and then maybe two weeks into the season, he has the ability to get a little better feel of the game and could have possibly been in the mix then.”

Offensive guard Stuart Hines entered week three of treatment for his own knee injury- a sprained knee that he suffered early into training camp. It is expected that Hines will be prepared to play in the season opener, but it is unknown whether he will be ready to start. Phillips says regardless of whether Hines plays on Thursday or not that he will be given breaks throughout the game to rest and will be spelled by a rotational lineman.

“If he does start, he will not go the whole game,” Phillips said. “We got to try to give him a blow somewhere in the game.”

“It feels alright, it just takes time to get back,” Hines said. “But you just got to take it day by day and see how it feels the next day and go from there.”

When asked whether or not he thought he would start against the Hilltoppers in Nashville, Hines replied “I hope so.” A senior, Hines has a great deal of confidence in the offensive line’s depth, however, saying guys like sophomore guard Kevin Mitchell on the second team have been working hard to prepare themselves in the event of an injury like Hines’.

Phillips also announced that this year’s team captains would be Hines and senior linebacker Danny Trevathan. Hines earned third-team all-SEC honors as a junior in 2010, with Trevathan earning first-team honors after leading the conference in tackles. In addition to Hines and Trevathan, Phillips will choose two more game captains each week to likely be chosen based on performances from the previous game.