Kentucky\u00a0defensive lineman\u00a0Nic Smith\u00a0has died at the age of 20, the school announced on Monday. Smith was entering his redshirt freshman season with the Wildcats after signing as a member of the 2025 recruiting class.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No cause of death was provided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Today our hearts are broken. Our thoughts and prayers are with Nic’s family, friends, teammates and everyone who knew and loved him. This is a tremendous loss for our program and university community. We will continue to support one another and honor his memory,” Kentucky coach Will Stein said in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Smith hailed from Loganville, Georgia, where he shone as a football and basketball player for Walnut Grove High School. As a senior, he amassed 11.0 tackles for loss and two sacks. Smith was a three-star recruit with scholarship offers from several programs across the Southeast. He ultimately chose Kentucky over\u00a0Georgia Tech\u00a0and\u00a0Georgia Southern. Last fall, Smith redshirted as a true freshman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the official Kentucky website, Smith’s nickname was “Happy,” and the three words that best described him were “happy,” “friendly,” and “nice.” In addition to football, Smith had a passion for cooking and wanted to start a food business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Kentucky\u00a0defensive lineman\u00a0Nic Smith\u00a0has died at the age of 20, the school announced on Monday. Smith was entering his redshirt freshman season with the Wildcats after signing as a member of the 2025 recruiting class. No cause of death was provided. “Today our hearts are broken. Our thoughts and prayers are with Nic’s family, friends, teammates […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12903],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-415190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12903"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415190"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415190\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":415204,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415190\/revisions\/415204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/6gnx6dd.cc\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}