No. 16 Kentucky Women Ready for March Madness
- 19 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Jamie H. Vaught
KySportsStyle.com Magazine
Kentucky women’s coach Kenny Brooks and his Wildcats have potential to become an incredibly special basketball team down the road.
Going into Sunday’s 4 p.m. ET matchup with fifth-ranked Vanderbilt in Nashville, the No. 16 Wildcats are on a roll with consecutive home victories over Texas A&M (75-55) and then-No. 14 Ole Miss (74-57) after recovering from a mid-season slump, partially due to 6-foot-5 senior standout Teonni Key’s elbow injury.
When Key was sidelined, Kentucky became a different team, making numerous mistakes and forcing six or seven other players to play more minutes than usual, and they, especially the starters, ran out of gas at the end. Key missed six games due to dislocated elbow before returning to action in a road victory at Arkansas on February 1.
Kentucky did win a couple of games without Key, including a 63-57 victory over then-No. 5 Oklahoma. During Key’s absence, UK posted a 2-4 mark, including a two-point setback to then-No. 17 Tennessee in Knoxville.
So, as you know, Key is a major contributor on the team. At this writing, Key, a preseason All-SEC second team, is averaging 25.5 minutes while scoring 11.3 points per game. The North Carolina native also grabbed a team second-best 6.9 rebounds.
Looking ahead, the Wildcats have three regular season games left, including two on the road at Vanderbilt and Auburn. They will finish the season with a home date at Historic Memorial Coliseum against three-time national champion and legendary coach Dawn Staley and her third-ranked South Carolina team on March 1.
The UK-USC game is also the Senior Day for Teonni Key, Josie Gilvin, Amelia Hassett, Tonie Morgan and Jordan Obi. Singing the national anthem will be Marlana VanHoose, while Red Panda will perform at halftime.
The UK-Vandy game, by the way, will be shown on either ESPN, ESPN2 or SEC Network. As of right now, the other two games will be shown on SEC Network Plus.
The Cats, now 20-7 overall and 7-6 in SEC, are talented enough to win all three season-ending games, but it won’t be easy, especially against South Carolina. “There is a lot of parity in this league,” said Brooks, the second-year coach who just notched his 20th 20-plus win season in 24 years as a head coach.
Currently, there are 10 SEC teams ranked this week in the Associated Press Top 25 poll, beginning with South Carolina at No. 3 and ending with Alabama at No. 25.
And if Kentucky stays healthy and plays well in the next few weeks, including the SEC Tournament, UK will host the first and second round games of the NCAA Tournament at Historic Memorial Coliseum if it finishes among the top 16 teams in the Big Dance. According to this week’s NET rankings, which is the primary tool used by the selection committee to evaluate and seed teams for the tournament, UK is No. 16, behind five SEC teams (South Carolina, Texas, LSU, Vanderbilt and Oklahoma).
Earlier in the season, Kentucky defeated LSU 80-78 in Baton Rouge and, as mentioned previously, Oklahoma 63-57 at home.
So far, UK has a 4-4 record against Associated Press-ranked opponents this season.
After Sunday’s victory over Ole Miss, Brooks is pleased with the team’s performance as the Cats defeated three AP Top 15 teams in the regular season for the first time since 1982-83.
“I am very proud of our kids,” said the coach, who once guided Virginia Tech to a Final Four appearance in 2023. “You see the way that they hung in there, not just today, but when we dug ourselves a hole and we dropped a few games that we probably thought we should have won in Teonni’s absence. But throughout the whole time, just our preparation, the attitude in the locker room, everyone was still on board, knowing what we could be.
“I think I made a statement (when) I said I didn’t like where we were, but I was excited about where we were going to go. And these kids stepped up; they locked in, and they never wavered with their preparation, with their execution. And this was a really good week for us, but that was a particularly good outing for us today. So, I am very proud of these two (Tonie Morgan and Clara Strack). A lot of people made tremendous contributions, and that’s how we got the win as a team today.”
Added 6-foot-5 Strack, a Naismith Trophy Player of the Year and National Defensive Player of the Year candidate, “Energy is something that we talked about from day one. I think in our games that we did drop a few, that was one of our biggest issues. We’re not bringing the energy throughout the whole game. So, I think that’s something that helped us get out, like to start today, is how much energy we’ve been bringing in practices and how much we’re carrying it over and out to our games, just celebrating each other and being there for each other is really what kind of builds the energy. And then I think the crowd feeds off that, and then we feed off the crowd back. I think that’s been really helpful for us.”
On preparing for big games, Morgan said, “Every day matters. We can’t take any day off. We have to show up to practice every day, or we’ll end up in a hole.”
Morgan recently was chosen to the Top 10 Midseason List for Nancy Lieberman Point Guard of the Year. Through Sunday’s games (Feb. 15), she currently leads the nation with 228 assists.
As you will recall, last season was very special for then-rebuilding Wildcats, led by All-American Georgia Amoore, as they finished fourth in the loaded SEC with an 11-5 mark and advanced to the NCAA second round before dropping to Kansas State 80-79 in an overtime thriller. Overall, Kentucky finished with a 23-8 record and Brooks, in his first season at UK, was named as the 2025 Sporting News National Coach of the Year.
But this season could be even more special as the hungry Wildcats shoot for a magical run during March Madness.
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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