LEXINGTON, Ky. — Vince Marrow spent Valentine’s Day in 2021 taking in some high school hoops. The University of Kentucky football recruiting ace was in Richmond to watch his nephew, John McCrear, then playing for Lexington Catholic, face off against Madison Central.
While there, Marrow had a productive night for his day job. The UK assistant observed a nearly 6-foot-9 Madison Central hoops reserve whose body suggested he had the makings of an intriguing college football prospect.
That began Malachi Wood’s path to becoming a class of 2023 Kentucky Wildcats football commit.
“I guess (Marrow) saw me pregame,” Wood says. “He was asking around who I was. That’s the first time I had really heard I was on his radar. It was pretty exciting.”
Wood first played organized football in sixth grade. “I fell in love with it the first day we got our helmets,” Wood says. “I knew (football) was what I wanted to do.”
From the point Marrow saw him in the basketball gymnasium, UK gradually dialed up its recruiting focus on Wood. On May 13, 2021, Wood was getting ready to go through a football weight-training workout. Instead, Madison Central head football coach Mike Holcomb called Wood into his office and handed the offensive tackle prospect the phone.
Marrow was at the other end of the call.
“That’s when he offered me,” Wood says. “He was saying they saw a lot of potential in me. ”
If things go as Wood envisions during his time at Kentucky, he will follow in the footsteps of past in-state Wildcats such as Landon Young (Lafayette) and Drake Jackson (Woodford County) as well as current Cats starting center Eli Cox (West Jessamine) and eventually become a cornerstone of the UK offensive line — aka the “Big Blue Wall.”
From the time UK offered, the Cats were his recruiting leader, Wood says. “(Kentucky) was definitely my top pick. But I wanted to wait and see what else came along.”
Eventually, schools such as West Virginia, Purdue, Louisville, Maryland and Kansas, among others, offered Wood scholarships, too. “West Virginia made a big push for (Wood),” Holcomb says. “Louisville, Purdue came hard.”
After Wood took some college visits, weighed his options and talked things over with his family, he pulled the trigger on committing to Kentucky on March 5 of this year. “I knew UK is where I wanted to be,” he says.
Not shockingly for an athlete who presently stands 6-8 3/4 and has an almost 83-inch wingspan, basketball was Wood’s first love. Hoops ran in his family, too. His mom, Pam Wood, was a post player in her time at Madison Central. She once had 15 rebounds in a game against Powell County in 1999.
“(Malachi Wood) played (basketball) his sophomore year,” says Madison Central boys basketball coach Allen Feldhaus Jr. “… By the end of that year, he was coming along, showed some promise.”
However, Madison Central football’s push to the Class 6A playoff semifinals in 2021 — the Indians (10-4) were beaten, 31-21, by eventual state champion St. Xavier — meant Wood was not able to come out for basketball as a junior until the season was about to tip off.
“Football conditioning and basketball conditioning, especially for a kid that big, are totally different,” Feldhaus says. “And he was hurt, his back was hurt. After he missed two or three weeks, he came in and said, ‘Coach, I think I am just going to concentrate on football.’ And I didn’t have any problem with that. That’s where his future is.”
Wood will get his football future started early by enrolling at UK in January. He does not figure to be an immediate answer for a Kentucky offensive line that has had, to say the least, some difficulties in 2022. However, Wood is the epitome of a high-ceiling developmental prospect.
“I think his best football is ahead of him,” Holcomb says. “He’s got extremely long arms. He’s got a real long reach. And great feet. … I think he needs to develop strength. UK will take care of that.”
Even before he gets in an SEC weight-training program, Wood has changed his body. Earlier in his high school years, Wood says his weight was as high as 333 pounds. He then trimmed all the way down to 255.
“Now I’m back up to 280, 285,” he says. “I’m still trying to get my weight up, put on some muscle. I’ve talked to the guys up at UK. They’ve said they have a plan for me already.”
As his final season of high school football begins to tick down, Wood is hopeful Madison Central can make another run in the 6A playoffs.
He is a little wistful about giving up his final semester this spring with his high school friends to start college early. “I’m going to miss that, just hanging out, seeing my friends every day,” he says. “But I am gaining six extra months of just training, learning the (UK) playbook, getting stronger, just getting ready.”
For the guy Vince Marrow found at a high school basketball game, the goal is to become the next in-state pillar in a refortified version of the Big Blue Wall.
Says Malachi Wood: “It is really appealing, just all the in-state linemen UK has had.”
