By Otis Kirk
FAYETTEVILLE — Arkansas has three freshmen wide receivers and Kenny Guiton is impressed with each.
The freshmen are Fayetteville’s Isaiah Sategna, Clarendon’s Quincey McAdoo and Kennesaw (Ga.) North Cobb’s Sam Mbake. McAdoo was on campus in the spring while Sategna and Mbake enrolled this summer.
Sategna is also a sprinter in track. At Fayetteville in 2021, Sategna caught 100 passes for 1,908 yards and 17 touchdowns. Guiton was asked how Sategna’s track speed compares to other receivers.
“It’s different,” Guiton said. “Track speed is different. A young guy coming in doesn’t have all that taxing on his body, so right now he’s running by a lot of guys, and that’s what he’s asked to do. But keep progressing. Keep progressing him and give him a chance to compete, and keep watching him do his thing.”
Mbake, like Sategna, was a four-star recruit. As a senior in high school, Mbake caught 22 passes for 378 yards and four touchdowns. His quarterback there was Malachi Singleton, a four-star who is committed to the Hogs for the Class of 2023.
“Very eager guy,” Guiton said. “He’s texting me at night, texting me in the morning, wants to know what he needs to do, what he needs to correct, things of that nature. He’s just a guy, like I said earlier, you can tell he wants to be great. A guy like that makes a coach even better, because I want to be great for him. He’s the type of guy – he’s tough, very tough. He’s not scared to go throw himself in there in the fire and go make a mistake. I tell guys all the time, ‘If you’re going to make a mistake, do it 100 miles per hour. It’s my job to fix it.’ I can’t fix effort, and he’s like the epitome of that, a guy that’s going to go hard. I can coach him all day, everyday.”
Guiton was asked about the role he has in mind for Mbake.
“I don’t really want to define roles yet, but I do think he’s a guy that’s competing his butt off trying to get on that bus, trying to get on the plane,” Guiton said. “Right now, he’s putting himself in a good position to do that. He needs to keep coming along, keep learning. As he learns that playbook even more and more and more and the defenses more, he’s going to put himself in a really, really good position. He’s just got to keep going.”
McAdoo, also a four-star, was a versatile player for Mark Courtney at Clarendon as a senior. He completed 7 of 19 passes for 165 yards and two touchdowns, rushed 82 times for 894 yards and 11 touchdowns while catching 34 passes for 617 yards and eight touchdowns. He also was a force on defense. As far as going through the 15 spring practices, Guiton feels that was a huge help for McAdoo.
“100%,” Guiton said. “It’s easy to see he’s a guy who came in early, got a good grasp of the offense. Obviously, he’s still learning, still in that learning curve process to where you can tell once that kid gets it down, he’s going to be an animal. I think he’s going to be an animal.”
Jadon Haselwood is the leader of the wide receivers room after coming over from OU at midterm. He likes what he has seen of the freshmen trio so far.
“Yeah, they actually took big steps, even just from coming in in the summer, with the walkthroughs and whatnot,” Haselwood said. “And just seeing them being able to play and make plays whether they’re on the other field or when we’re on the same field. It’s just, everybody’s kind of comfortable. You don’t really see too much anxious people out there. You know, everybody’s just making plays and being smooth.”
Sophomore Ketron Jackson was in their shoes just one year ago after coming in from Royse City (Texas) High School. He also talked about the three freshmen.
“Pretty much,” Jackson said. “I’ve been knowing Quincey, and I had Sam on an unofficial so we’ve been talking a lot. But I just told them come in with a mindset of, like, don’t overthink. Everyone out there, they make plays. They don’t know the play, they’re still learning, but they’re making plays, and they’re being consistent with it. Even Isaiah Sategna. I told him to use his speed. ‘Don’t be hesitant to use your speed. That’s your biggest threat.’ So he’s been doing good.”
Jackson added the three fastest receivers are Sategna, Matt Landers and Bryce Stephens. Sategna is listed at 5-foot-11 while Stephen is 6-0. Haselwood was asked if a shorter receiver can bring things to the table a taller one can’t?
“I mean that’s kind of hard because even the taller guys are kind of fast and we all can run routes,” Haselwood said. “So it’s kind of, I really don’t even know how to even answer that. I feel like everybody in the room just got something special, and we’ve all got some of the same specialties if that makes sense. I mean, we all can run routes. we all can get open we all can catch the ball. So it’s kind of hard to even answer that.”
Arkansas was off from practice today, but will don pads for first time on Thursday.