Winning championships can be contagious. Paintsville is coming off a Class 1A football title. Though they have certainly lost some big-time talent from off that roster, they will be the first to tell you no body in Paintsville, Kentucky is conceding anything.
Among one of the pivotal returnees from off last year’s title run is two-way lineman Matthew Davis. Davis played both OL and DL on last year’s team. While the 6-2, 230-pounder is plenty accomplished along an offensive front (17 pancakes in ’20), most feel his college home is at DE.
Davis was a bone fide superstar over his junior season for the Tigers. He had 40-stops and both forced a fumble and recovered one. He also blocked a punt, all of which is certainly right impressive. Perhaps his most remarkable statistic, at least on the field of play, was his being second on the team in QB-sacks with four (4).
The entire team only registered 16-sacks on the season in 12-games. It isn’t like Paintsville’s opponents were sprinting the QB out to Davis’ side or anything.
Davis is getting recruited hard by Centre College. In addition to Centre’s being perhaps the hottest college out on the recruiting trail across the commonwealth right now, they have already constructed quite a pipeline into the fertile recruiting grounds that is the Paintsville High School locker room.
The Colonels plucked Karsten Poe and John Blackburn from off of last year’s roster. Word is they have fixed their eyes on several of this year’s talented prospects with Davis being chief among those targets.
In the end, we haven’t the foggiest about whether this kid ends up in Danville, Kentucky or not. Truth is, he has the skill set to play at any number of levels in the college game.
With a 3.3 GPA, he has put himself in position to partake of the many benefits afforded players of his ilk who wish to play at an elite academic school like Centre. Any school, including schools at various levels of competition, recruiting talent like Davis will find itself in championship contention in short order.
Davis is one of those guys we are comfortable forecasting being in All-State discussion at year’s end. He’s an All-Stater to us, whether he gets included on an end of the year team or not. If we are being honest, it is very hard to make postseason All-anything teams from the 1A classification.
Regardless, he’s All-State in our eyes. Since we have a vote, that’s something!
This is Coach HB Lyon, reporting for KPGFootball, and we’re JUST CALLING IT LIKE WE SEE IT!
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