After Kentucky head coach Mark Stoops tabbed sophomore Patrick Towles his new starting quarterback after a four-way competition throughout the spring and preseason camp, Towles had one person he needed to tell first – dad. Towles father, Terry, had lost his father when he was 18 years old and was a huge football fan. Towles sent his dad a quick text, “Papa Tommy is partying in heaven.” It didn’t take Terry long to realize his son was named the starting QB for the Wildcats. Following Tuesday’s practice, Towles had his first opportunity to meet with the media as the new signal caller for Kentucky. “Relief,” Towles said about his reaction to being named starter. “I’m super excited. It’s a great opportunity. It’s something that I’ve wanted for my entire life. To have this kind of opportunity is awesome.”Now having two practices under his belt as the starting quarterback, Towles can now focus on his duties without the distraction of a QB competition. “Good. I felt like I can play free,” Towles said about how practice has been the last two days. “During the competition I would make a bad throw, and I’d constantly be like, ‘Gosh.’ Every throw had to be perfect, but now it’s a relief that I can go out and just let it all hang out and play. I felt like I was a senior in high school and I was just able to play and just make plays. And that’s a good feeling.”Now the key cog in offensive coordinator Neal Brown’s high-tempo offensive attack, Towles must take on a leadership role and set the standard for his unit’s performance. “He’s talented enough to run any offense, really,” Brown detailed. “He’s got a strong arm. He’s big. He’s 6-4-plus. I think he’s 240 pounds-plus. He hit like 19.8 miles per hour yesterday in practice, so he runs well. So our offense, any offense, he’s capable of doing well.”    The former Kentucky High School Mr. Football out of Highlands in Ft. Thomas, Ky., Towles played in five games as a true freshman in 2012. He dazzled Commonwealth Stadium with a sparkling debut, completing 5-of-5 passes for 71 yards and a 32-yard touchdown strike in his first career series in 2012 vs. Mississippi State. Later in the game, Towles suffered an injury that hampered his chance to get on the field as a freshman. “It’s a whole maturation process,” Towles said about his first two years on campus. “It goes through ups and downs. Like I said, when I got here, I was an 18-year-old kid. Playing in front of 65,000 people was nuts. It was crazy. Now I’ve been here for going on my third year in school, and it definitely feel like everything is a lot quicker, sharper and it’s easier to make decisions.”Towles then battled with Maxwell Smith and Jalen Whitlow in a preseason competition in 2013, with Smith and Whitlow sharing the position during the season.”I guess around this time (last year), the race was between me, Jalen (Whitlow) and Maxwell (Smith),” Towles detailed. “(Coach Stoops) brought me in there and was like, ‘Hey, you’re doing a good job but there’s still some stuff you need to work on before you can really make a run at this thing.’ I said, ‘All right, got it.’ So this entire time I went out and fixed everything that he had said.”And go to work he did, dedicating his redshirt season to revamping his fundamentals. “Just with everything, everything fundamentally,” Towles said about his goals for improvement during 2013. “You have to be fundamentally almost perfect to play well in this league, consistently play well, especially against the people that we play against. My feet had to get better. My release had to change. I had to get my head on straight and really go after this thing. That’s what I did.” Now the starting quarterback at his home-state school, it would be easy for Towles to bask in the glow of his accomplishment. That is not in his plans. “This is just the beginning,” Towles said. “Right now I’m focused on Tennessee Martin and next Saturday.”