Kentucky Has New Set of Twin Towers in Strack and Key
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
By Jamie H. Vaught
KySportsStyle.com Magazine
Over the years, Kentucky had a couple of legendary "Twin Towers" who either helped Coach Joe B. Hall's Wildcats win the 1978 national championship or guided them to the 1984 Final Four.
And UK now has a new set of Twin Towers.
So move over -- the 1978 duo of Rick Robey and Mike Phillips, and the 1984 duo of Sam Bowie and Melvin Turpin -- as we need to make room for a new pair of 6-foot-5 stars in junior Clara Strack and senior Teonni Key of the UK women's team.
The duo of Strack and Key has been instrumental in helping the No. 5 seed Wildcats to a 25-10 mark and reach the NCAA Sweet Sixteen this weekend in Fort Worth. By the way, it's the first time UK has reached the Sweet Sixteen since 2016 when then-coach Matthew Mitchell led the No. 3 seed Wildcats to a final record of 25-8.
Facing against No. 4 seed West Virginia in the second round of the NCAA Tournament in Morgantown on Monday evening, Strack and Key helped the Wildcats to an exciting 75-74 victory at Hope Coliseum with double-double performances. Strack hit 18 points and grabbed a game-high15 rebounds -- her 16th double-double of the season -- while Key scored a team-high 19 points and snatched 10 rebounds, her seventh double-double of the season.
In addition, Strack, a native of Buffalo, N.Y., also had a team-highs four assists and four blocks.
Also helping the new Twin Towers to an electrifying victory before a partisan WVU crowd of 12,830 were 6-foot-4 senior forward Ameiia Hassett (a three-point specialist who had nine points and six rebounds), senior point guard Tonie Morgan (15 points and 9 of 10 free throws), junior Asia Boone (nine points, including 3 of 7 three-pointers), and 6-foot-1 graduate guard Jordan Obi (4 points, while averaging 9.3 points this season).
Kentucky nearly blew a 14-point lead in the late third quarter, but the Cats held off the Mountaineers as WVU's potential game-winning basket rimmed out in the waning seconds.
The Wildcats, who are the second tallest team in the SEC behind South Carolina, took advantage of WVU's smaller lineup. It is also UK coach Kenny Brooks' tallest team in his 24 seasons as a head coach.
Brooks praised the Twin Towers' performance.
"I thought Clara was tremendous, 18 (points) and 15 (rebounds), really manned the paint. Teonni with 19 and 10 bounced back from a subpar game (against James Madison)," said Brooks. "I told both of them one day before practice in the preseason that they had the potential to be the best frontcourt in the country. Tonight they showed why they can be that.
"They're tandem, both of them are 6' 5", they're mobile. You saw Teonni bringing the ball down the floor, helping break the press. Clara did it a couple times. Then they can man the paint. So I was very proud of those kids."
Said Key during the postgame press conference, "We were a bigger team. They (coaches) had been telling us that in the shootarounds and practice and stuff like that, just highlighting that advantage we knew. All year we've been a long team. So, I think just really exposing that (their smaller lineup) and just going at them, honestly."
On Key, Strack commented, "I think we also play really well together. Not just one of us can do that by ourselves. We need each other, and we do a really good job of playing off one another. Like you said, we did have a height advantage. So, you have to take obviously whatever advantage you get and then use that."
With Kentucky advancing to Sweet Sixteen this weekend, Brooks said he's going to enjoy the memorable moments.
"I'm too old to be living life and not stopping and smelling the roses," smiled Brooks. "With that mentality, I adopted it a couple years ago, and it's allowed me to enjoy moments like this even more so.
"We're going to be prepared. We're going to be ready for the next opportunity, but you've got to really embrace it. I have a group of young women in that locker room that are so much fun to be around. They're great kids. They're very smart. I think they have like a 3.5 (GPA). Not one of them has been late to a meeting yet. They tell the bus driver, yes, sir, or thank you every time they get off the bus.
"When you have a group like that and they're good at basketball, you'd better stop and smell the roses because you never know, and you want to make sure that you enjoy every second of it. That's what I'm doing with this group."
Kentucky will face No. 1 seed Texas on Saturday in Fort Worth. The 3 p.m. ET game will be shown on ABC. Both teams met earlier in the season with the Longhorns beating the Cats 64-53 before a crowd of nearly 10,000 in Austin.
Jamie H. Vaught, a longtime sports columnist in Kentucky, is the author of seven books about UK basketball, including newly published “Unforgettable Journey with the Cats: Inside Kentucky Hoops Madness.” Now a retired college professor who taught at Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College in Middlesboro, he is the editor and founder of KySportsStyle.com Magazine. You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @KySportsStyle or reach him via email at KySportsStyle44@gmail.com.
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