Kentucky football: Nation's second-ranked center commits to Wildcats
The Kentucky football program's recruiting class of 2015 is shaping up to be a quarterback's dream.
Luke Hiers — the No. 2 center in the class — announced his commitment to the Wildcats on Thursday night.
UK's class now stands at six players, and five of those prospects are projected to be offensive linemen at the next level.
Hiers is the highest rated of the bunch.
Rivals.com considers him to be the No. 224 overall prospect in 2015 and the second-best center in the country. He's one of only two players at that position to earn a four-star rating from the recruiting service.
His commitment came less than a week after a visit to Lexington for the Blue-White Spring Game, which has become a major recruiting tool for Coach Mark Stoops and his assistants.
Hiers was one of several highly touted prospects in town for last weekend's event, and he and his fellow recruits spent the hour leading up to the scrimmage out on the Commonwealth Stadium field mingling with each other and the UK coaches.
The Lake Wales, Fla., resident also visited UK earlier in April and has long considered the Wildcats his No. 1 school.
He chose Kentucky over scholarship offers from Nebraska, Louisville, Miami, Mississippi State, N.C. State and several others.
Hiers is high school teammates with class of 2015 defensive back Marcus Walker, who committed to UK in January but backed out of that pledge last month.
Walker is still considering Kentucky.
A 6-foot-3, 290-pound prospect, Hiers has been one of UK's top recruiting targets in the current cycle.
He joins Henderson County's Mason Wolfe, Ohio's Larry Wells, Alabama's Logan Stenberg and Washington, D.C.'s Levon Livingston as the fifth offensive lineman in UK's recruiting class of 2015.
Hiers is the ninth prospect from the Rivals 250 to commit to UK since Stoops was hired following the 2012 season.
The Cats had only one such commitment in the five classes prior to his arrival.
This story was originally published May 1, 2014 at 10:22 PM.