Rising redshirt junior Patrick Towles returns to Kentucky after his first season as the team’s starting quarterback in 2014, yet he’s spending this spring battling for the right to maintain his starting job.

His primary (and only) competitor is redshirt freshman Drew Barker, the only other scholarship quarterback on the roster now that Reese Phillips is shelved for an extended period of time with an achilles injury.

Towles and Barker are both former four-star recruits who played their high school ball in the commonwealth of Kentucky, and other than Towles’ year of starting experience in the SEC there’s not much separating the two signal callers.

That’s why UK head coach Mark Stoops and new offensive coordinator Shannon Dawson have allowed each quarterback to rotate practice sessions with the first team, allotting each player an even number of practices to prove their worth with the rest of the starting offense. That’s also why at this juncture of spring ball the Cats do not appear any closer to deciding on a starting quarterback for the 2015 season opener in September.

Towles is spending the spring working on his accuracy, a limitation that held him back during UK’s six-game losing skid to close the season one win shy of bowl eligibility. The returning starter completed only 57.3 percent of his throws a year ago, and he threw 10 of his 14 touchdowns in UK’s first six games and five of his nine interceptions in UK’s final six games.

“Think about shooting a bow and arrow, you pretty much have to have your front shoulder and your front hip and your front foot all pointed at the target you’re going to shoot at,” private quarterback tutor Donny Walker, who worked with Towles last offseason and again this year, explained to the Lexington Herald-Leader. “Throwing a football is very similar to that. If you don’t have your body aligned in that type of position, you don’t have enough control over the ball.”

Barker, meanwhile, is just hoping to prove he has what it takes to start in the SEC. He redshirted a year ago when Neal Brown, now the head coach at Troy, was still running the offense, but Stoops noted that the change from Brown to Dawson, coupled with Barker’s four remaining years of eligibility, give him a do-over as far as winning the job from Towles is concerned.

“One good thing with the change (from Brown to Dawson) is having a new set of eyes on that position,” Stoops told Central Kentucky News. “Let coach Dawson really look and evaluate those quarterbacks and make sure and just see how they flourish and how they do under new leadership. So, it will be good to get another evaluation and just open it back up.

“With Drew redshirting last year, giving him an opportunity to win that job again. But with that being said, I do think Patrick did some very good things and that’s no disrespect for him. It’s just giving an opportunity like we do at every position.”

It makes sense that a new offensive coordinator should hold his own quarterback competition rather than accepting a starter chosen by a coach no longer with the program. Towles may win back the job anyway, but he’d do so with the confidence of the man tasked with calling plays this season and beyond.

It’s highly unlikely UK determines its 2015 starter during spring ball, so all Towles and Barker can do is compete and focus on improving the little elements of their games that can make a big difference come the fall. As spring continues on, Stoops said he’s noticed both players have become more confident, which should only enhance the ongoing quarterback battle and the play of the entire offense once a starter is named.

“The last two days they looked more calm and more confident out there. Certainly yesterday they were as poised as they’ve been since I’ve been here, in the pocket sitting there throwing the ball downfield,” Stoops told the Louisville Courier-Journal on Saturday. “Even today with the success they had, yesterday we got the ball downfield even better. I think they’re doing a better job.”