Kentucky women’s basketball loses another player before start of regular season
Just minutes before the start of one of the most anticipated seasons in Kentucky women’s basketball history, the Wildcats lost another player for the foreseeable future.
On Tuesday night, prior to its season-opening game against Presbyterian College, the UK program announced that sophomore forward Nyah Leveretter will miss an unspecified amount of time due to a non-COVID related illness.
Leveretter is in her second season in Lexington. As a freshman during the 2020-21 season, Leveretter appeared in 14 games for the Wildcats, all off the bench. She averaged 6.7 minutes per contest, with season highs in both points scored (seven) and rebounds (nine) during a 61-point home win over Wofford.
Leveretter is again expected to be a bench option for the Wildcats this season, and is one of only three UK players, along with redshirt junior forward Dre’una Edwards and redshirt junior center Olivia Owens, who are listed as frontcourt players.
During Kentucky’s lone preseason exhibition game Thursday night against NCAA Division II Lee University, Leveretter played 13 minutes and recorded eight points and five rebounds.
Leveretter’s absence further exacerbates a scarcity of players for the No. 13-ranked UK women’s team.
Kentucky now has only nine players available, including freshman walk-on guard Kristen Crenshaw-Gill, who joined the team via open tryouts in September.
Sophomore guard Erin Toller was dismissed from the UK program in October and the Wildcats lost senior guard Blair Green for the season to a ruptured right Achilles suffered during a closed-door scrimmage against Eastern Kentucky later last month.
Kentucky was to begin the 2021-22 season Tuesday night at home against Presbyterian, and UK will play three games in a six-day span against Presbyterian, North Alabama at home Thursday night and at No. 8 Indiana on Sunday afternoon in a game that will be broadcast on ESPN.
This story was originally published November 9, 2021 at 6:02 PM.
