Batt has personality, drive to be perfect UK fit
Published 8:00 am Wednesday, July 1, 2026
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New Kentucky athletic director J Batt with the late Homer Rice and his wife, Karen, at Georgia Tech. Karen Rice believes her husband would fully endorse Batt’s selection at Kentucky. (SUBMITTED)
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Sporting News columnist Mike DeCourcy believes Braydon Hawthorne (left) could be a difference maker for Kentucky this season. (CHET WHITE/Kentucky Athletics)
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New UK tight ends coach Justin Burke was the perfect age to embrace Hal Mumme’s Air Raid offense at Kentucky. (SYDNEY YONKER/Kentucky Athletics)
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Justin McBride was only in the sixth grade the first time he met former Kentucky men’s basketball star Julius Randle. (KENTUCKY ATHLETICS)
Kentucky native Homer Rice was an All-American football player at Centre Centre in 1948 and from 1951-61 he compiled a 101-9-7 record coaching high school football in Kentucky and Tennessee. He was offensive coordinator at Kentucky under coach Charlie Bradshaw from 1962-65 and later was head coach at Cincinnati and Rice before a two-year stint in the NFL as head coach of the Cincinnati Bengals (1978-79).
Rice was also a successful college athletics director at North Carolina (1969-75), Rice (1976-77) and Georgia Tech (1980-1997). His tenure at Georgia Tech included a 1990 national championship in football, 1990 men’s basketball Final Four, nine consecutive appearances in the NCAA Tournament in basketball, 1994 College Baseball World Series runner-up, 13 consecutive NCAA appearances in baseball, 1994 NCAA runner-up in golf and 14 ACC team championships.
New Kentucky athletic director Jason “J” Batt was AD at Georgia Tech from 2022-25 before spending the last two years at Michigan State.
Karen Rice has nothing but “wonderful thoughts” about the new UK athletic director.
“Homer and I knew him well. Homer felt like he was the man for the job. I am sure he is thinking now somewhere up there (in heaven) that he is perfect for UK,” Karen Rice said.
Homer Rice passed away on June 10, 2024, but there is a statue of him near the entrance to Bobby Dodd Stadium at Georgia Tech and the Homer Rice Award established by the National Association of Collegiate Directors of Athletics is given annually to a FBS director as recognition of achievement.
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“I love J Batt and his wife and family. He is a great fundraiser. He knows all the things a successful AD should and knows how to run an athletics program,” Karen Rice said. “He has a great personality and he will mix well with the Lexington community and state of Kentucky. I think the community will welcome him and he will be glad to be there. He is just a great person. To me, he is the perfect person for this job.”
When Batt got the job at Georgia Tech, he came to visit Rice at his home. At the time, Homer and Karen Rice had two suites at Georgia Tech home football games.
“I told Homer we no longer needed two, so why not give one to J for his family and he gave him that suite. We saw (Batt’s wife) Leah and the kids every week. J was in there (the suite) some, but he had to spend time visiting with a lot of people. However, he always came into our suite to see us. He’s just a great guy.
“Homer really liked him a lot. They had such a mutual respect for each other. I think Homer admired him because he was young and ambitious and suited for the role as AD at Georgia Tech. He brought people together at Tech. He respects the old guard and learned from them, which Homer appreciated. Not everybody is like that.”
Batt has worked at seven schools since 2005 and his five years as associate athletic director at Alabama from 2017-22 was his longest stint anywhere. He was at Georgia Tech from 2022-25 and Michigan State from 2025-26.
“It will be interesting to see how long he stays. Homer made so many career changes and he respected J for making changes. I hope this is the big one that he has chosen and Kentucky is where he will be for a long time,” Karen Rice said. “He was very visible at Georgia Tech. He was always out there doing something.
“He’s young and energetic. I think UK fans will love him and he will love Kentucky. I think J is just different. He is more motivated than most and I know coming back to the SEC will just motivate him even more to do everything he can for Kentucky.
“I have thought about what Homer would say about J Batt now and I think he would probably say J has an even greater opportunity to not just build winning teams but to build champions for life.”
When Homer Rice was inducted into the National Football Foundation Leadership Hall of Fame after his death, Batt spoke at the event.
“I’ll always appreciate this young man for doing that,” Karen Rice said.
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One Kentucky basketball player who is not being mentioned a lot when prospects for the 2026-27 season are discussed is redshirt freshman wing Braydon Hawthorne. However, Sporting News columnist Mike DeCourcy, who also does work for the Big Ten Network and FoxSports, says not to sleep on Hawthorne.
“Hawthorne was a top-35 prospect in his recruiting class. It is not unusual to not make an impact as a first-year freshman, but for a year he competed against high quality players on a solid NCAA Tournament team. He practiced daily against one of the 30 best teams in the country,” DeCourcy said.
“I think he can be a difference maker. They have a lot of options. He is not a power player. He will be more of a wing. He is going to add some decent size and hopefully the ability to bother bigger players with matchup issues with the way he can score.”
Hawthorne’s father, Walt, did not attend practices last year and did not question what coach Mark Pope and his staff were doing with his son.
“I knew he was getting stronger and mentally preparing for what was coming. He knew next year would be his time to come out and show what he can do. He has got better and is ready to help the team this year,” Walt Hawthorne said. “I never went to practices, but people at practice told me he did great and he is ready to be a major contributor.”
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Justin Burke was the perfect age to fully embrace the Air Raid era when Kentucky coach Hal Mumme had quarterbacks Tim Couch and Dusty Bonner helping the Wildcats have one of the nation’s most productive offenses.
Burke went on to become the 2005 Kentucky Gatorade Player of the Year when he threw for a state record 62 touchdowns and 3,789 yards to lead Lexington Catholic to a 14-1 record and Class 3A state championship. His impressive prep career ended with a 34-5 record as a starter after completing 538-of-879 passes for 8,770 yards.
Now Burke has returned to Lexington as the tight ends coach for Will Stein, his former teammate at Louisville and someone he coached with at Louisville, Texas and UTSA.
“I would have been 11 of 12 years old when Kentucky had that 1998 Outback Bowl team. I was the perfect age to love it. I was in middle school and that’s where you really idolize your heroes that you’re seeing out there on the football field,” Burke said. “The excitement when they had the Air Raid siren was unreal and there were certain songs that just kind of stuck in your mind. The game atmosphere was amazing. You might not remember all the specific plays, but you remember how you felt when you went to the stadium.”
Stein had Couch and receiver Craig Yeast, another star of the 1998 Outback Bowl team, visit during spring practice. He also had former All-American receiver Derek Abney talk to the team.
“Watching Derek Abney play and score on punt and kickoff returns … the stadium would get so loud,” Burke said. “You had a lot of guys from the state playing and you saw yourself in some Kentucky guys thinking it might be you one day.
“To come from Leslie County and do what Tim (Couch) did was just phenomenal. My mom’s from eastern Kentucky. You realize how big a deal football is in that area and you saw what was happening in the state after the Air Raid offense got going. It was a big deal.”
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Ousmane N’Diaye is a 7-footer from Senegal who has played in Italy, Germany and Spain but will play for Kentucky coach Mark Pope this season. He’s an unknown commodity to most UK fans, but has impressed teammates so far in summer workouts.
“He can shoot the ball and his length really surprised me,” freshman point guard Mason Williams said.
Williams said he had not watched any highlights of N’Diaye before he got to Kentucky earlier this month.
“I was literally kind of scared if he could speak English or not. He’s really fluent in English. He’s really good to be around,” Williams said.
The freshman called N’Diaye a “winner” because of the variety of skills he has.
“He has surprised me with just how he cares, how unselfish he is,” Williams said. “When he first got here, I went to dinner with him and he said he was kind of scared … not scared, but he didn’t know if he was gonna like the U.S. or not.
“I told him it’s all about you. It’s going to be how you play, how you are going to work, and that’s going to play in your favor. It’s not how you like Lexington, if you like the coaches, if you like the programming, if you like playing at Kentucky, if you like where you stay. I told him if you got a problem, if you ever want to just hang out, or just be Oose, call me.”
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There might not have been a better compliment Kentucky coach Mark Pope could have given James Madison transfer Justin McBride than when he said he could see “shades” of former UK standout Julius Randle in McBride.
Randle played for the Wildcats in 2013-14 and got UK to the national title game. He was a top 10 NBA draft pick and is a three-time all-star who was recently traded to the Brooklyn Nets.
McBride is from Plano, Texas, while Randle is from Dallas.
“Julius Randle is one of my guys I know that I’m really close with back in Dallas,” McBride said. “I talk to him a lot, train with him back in the summer, too. It’s just a dream (for Pope) to pick a guy like that, that plays kind of my style of play. I’m excited to prove to the people that I can really play at a SEC level.”
McBride was a sixth grader the first time he met Randle, who was playing at Prestonwood Christian. McBride has worked out with Randle and also sought advice from him.
“He told me a lot of good things. He had a great, successful career here (at Kentucky). But just to play with confidence. Don’t worry about all the lights and stuff like that. Just play basketball,” McBride said. “We’ve been playing all our lives, so just play. There’s nothing different than just putting the ball in the basket and just playing for my teammates and winning.”
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Quote of the Week: “That there should never be more than 68 teams at the start of the tournament. Expanding the tournament for no good reason, when the public clearly doesn’t want it is an absolutely horrible idea,” Sporting News columnist Mike DeCourcy, on the expanded NCAA Tournament field.
Quote of the Week 2: “We had a bus coming to the spring game. We rented a bus. I’m sure we’ll rent an even bigger bus coming to the first game. We’re just going to take it a game at a time, and I know that he will put the best possible game plan together and those guys will be working their tails off, and I’m just really, really excited,” Debbie Stein, UK coach Will Stein’s mother, on family and friends coming from Louisville to Lexington to watch UK football games.
Quote of the Week 3: “UK has been a dream, all my life, to come here. I never thought I’d be here, but the opportunity came. And once the opportunity came, I took full advantage of it. I’m really blessed to come here and be here with you guys,” James Madison transfer Justin McBride on “BBN Tonight,” about being at Kentucky.
