By Nick Gray

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The man whose commitment started the surprising craze of UK football recruiting was a junior college recruit who was not highly recruited — because he had not been recruited at all by a major college.

The man he would team up with on the defensive line and emulate wasn’t recruited as a defensive player, much less a lineman.

Senior defensive ends Bud Dupree and Za’Darius Smith have teamed together to become the bookends of a Cats defense that has a lot of young talent but hasn’t found success during the past few seasons. Smith and Dupree want to lead them in that direction.

“A good season would be a bowl game,” Dupree said. “But we have to be the leaders. It has to come from us.”

Dupree is from Irwinton, Ga. in central Georgia, near the smaller Georgia towns where Joker Phillips and Rich Brooks recruited Wesley Woodyard and Randall Burden, Raymond Sanders among others.

But none of those were the player that Dupree, NFL scouts say, can be. UK head coach Mark Stoops is the biggest supporter of Dupree’s potential in the next level.

“I’d be very shocked if Bud was not a first-round draft pick,” Stoops said. “He’s got to play his way into it, have the opportunity to be a high pick. I truly believe that. You know I’ve been around a lot of great ones.”

Dupree, in his first full year at defensive end after being originally recruited as a tight end before moving to outside linebacker, had seven sacks and 9.5 tackles for a loss with his defensive end mate on the other side.

Defensive line coach Jimmy Brumbaugh arrived in Lexington with Stoops and was a large factor in getting Smith to UK. Brumbaugh came from East Mississippi Community College, the same college in which Smith played his first two years.

Brumbaugh, entering his second season on UK’s coaching staff, compared the cycle of defensive linemen’s development to the process riding a bike. For example, the freshmen in camp, like Lloyd Tubman and

are working on bikes with training wheels, Brumbaugh said. The two senior leaders are much more advanced.

“Za’Darius and Bud are on the 10-speed bikes,” Brumbaugh said. “They still can improve on doing some technical things to move up to a super bike, but they’re in a good spot right now.”

Smith was born in Greenville, Ala. and spent his first two seasons at the aforementioned East Mississippi CC, where he was a Second-Team All-American, earning 6.5 sacks and 45 tackles. He came to UK as one of the Top 10 junior college recruits in the 2013 class and enrolled in January 2013.

“He made his mark early, and he did not disappoint last year,” Brumbaugh said.

Smith duplicated his sack total from his sophomore season and ranked in the Top 10 in the SEC in sacks, along with Dupree.

“We are brothers,” Smith said. “It’s a great time when we meet each other at the quarterback. But we try to be leaders for the young guys more than anything.”

Brumbaugh said that very thing — being the leaders for the younger players more than last season — is why he is so keen on the duo that Stoops thinks is going to be early-round picks in the NFL Draft next April.

“Those guys were leaders by action last year. They both were the quiet type — especially Bud,” Brumbaugh said. “Now, they’re both very vocal, and they lead by that as well as in drills and on the field. It’s good for a coach, and it’s good for a team when you have a pair of guys like that.”