Neal Brown knows incoming freshmen face a challenge they don’t fully understand in adjusting to college football.That’s why he has a saying he repeats often as they make the transition from high school.”This is what I always tell them, to kind of make it real for you, is I tell them to pick out the best player they played against in their high school career,” Brown said. “The very best player. Think about it. Now, that player — you’re going against somebody as good or better every single day in practice. It’s just a totally different world for them.”It’s a different world that those talented newcomers are beginning to understand.With UK opening practice to fans and media for the third time in four days, the Wildcat offense struggled through a seven-on-seven period before impressing in red-zone and team drills. Patrick Towles, with it being his day in UK’s quarterback rotation, was leading the way most often, but the up-and-down performance had a lot to do with a receiving corps relying heavily on a number of freshmen.”We’re young at wideout,” Brown said. “You can see it. There’s some times where we make some really good plays. Like Thaddeus Snodgrass and Blake Bone made some really good plays. And there’s some times when we’re struggling getting off man, and a lot of that has to do with just pad level and understanding it’s a little bit different than high school.”With Bone, Snodgrass and Dorian Baker getting plenty of first-team reps with Javess Blue, Jeff Badet and Alexander Montgomery out or limited as they recover from injury, Brown has taken advantage of size the freshmen add in his play-calling. That was clear on the fade pass Towles threw to the 6-foot-5 Bone.”That’s something we didn’t have at any point last year,” Brown said. “That’s something we made a living on at (Texas) Tech. We were long on the outside.”UK’s freshmen have also provided a new dimension at running back with the speedy Stanley “Boom” Williams and Mikel Horton, a 230 pounder. The Wildcats are deep at the position, with Braylon Heard, Jojo Kemp and Josh Clemons looking strong during camp, but this staff won’t be shy about playing youngsters if they deserve.”We’re going to play the best ones,” Brown said. “We’re going to play the best kids. Stanley is really starting to come on. He’s making some — he made a couple really good runs today. What I told him, what I tried to explain to him, he broke one to the outside, that was against the twos. If it was against the ones, he would have got ran down. So just trying to explain to him, you’re not going to outrun everybody. It’s better to get a two-yard gain than a five-yard loss. That’s something that you just need some experience. “Mikel Horton did a really good job in our short yardage segment there. He gives us that added dimension.”

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