Kentucky football lands 2017 four-star athlete Lynn Bowden

Lynn Bowden (Youngstown, OH) committed to Mark Stoops and the Kentucky Wildcats on Saturday afternoon.

Bowden, a Class of 2017 athlete, is one of the top recruits in the state of Ohio. He finds himself fifth amongst his home state peers, with Josh Myers, Brendon White, Amir Ripe and Marcus Williamson all ahead of him (Intriguingly, every single one of those aforementioned players is an Ohio State Buckeyes commit, and the sixth-ranked player in the state, Jaylen Harris, is also headed to Columbus as well).

He had been pursued by plenty of high-major programs but Kentucky, Michigan State and Penn State were perhaps the strongest suitors. Going into Saturday, the Wildcats accumulated 84 percent of the 25 predictions made via his 247Sports Crystal Ball page while the Spartans and Nittany Lions had 12 and 6 percent respectively.

Lynn had visited Kentucky back on December 2 per his 247Sports page, so the turnaround from visit-to-commit was roughly a month and a half. He ranks now as the best player in the class of 23 that Kentucky has heading into next year by a pretty decent margin over wide receiver JaVonte Richardson of Maple Heights, Ohio. In the 247Sports era, Lynn Bowden ranks seventh on their all-time recruits list in the company of Drake Jackson, Morgan Newton, Drew Barker, Landon Young, Micah Johnson and Antonio Hall who tops the list.

Bowden has played quarterback, returner, running back and wide receiver in his time at Warren G. Harding High School in Youngstown. Needless to say, he could serve as a ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of sort if he pans out at the college level for Stoops and the ‘Cats. Stoops’ bunch is now 21st in the 247Sports recruiting rankings for 2017. Their standing at 21st is the highest Kentucky has found themselves since 2014 when they were 22nd.

(h/t David Baugh)