How did UK win the SEC Tournament title? With a play design months in the making.
The opportunity for the play was partially luck.
With 16 seconds left in Sunday’s Southeastern Conference Tournament finals between Kentucky and No. 1 South Carolina, Gamecocks guard Zia Cooke stepped to the foul line.
South Carolina led 62-61 and to that point had staved off a ravenous fourth-quarter comeback attempt by the Cats.
To that point in her junior season, Cooke had been a 73.5% foul shooter, draining 61 of her 83 attempts from the charity stripe.
For Cooke to make both of her foul shots would have been understandable. To split them, also reasonable.
For Cooke to miss both, and then for Kentucky senior guard Robyn Benton to grab the rebound and give UK the ball down one with plenty of time left for a winning shot was far from likely.
So that’s when Kyra Elzy and her coaching staff went to work.
With 11 seconds seconds left, Elzy and her collection of coaches — including associate head coach Niya Butts, assistant coach Amber Smith and assistant coach Gail Goestenkors — went to work.
What resulted from that meeting will go down in Kentucky athletics lore: An open three-pointer for Dre’una Edwards from almost the top of the key, the completion of a 14-point fourth quarter comeback against the nation’s No. 1 team and UK’s first SEC Tournament title in women’s basketball since 1982.
But the birth of the play that won it all for Kentucky came many months ago.
Goestenkors is a new addition to the UK coaching staff this season, having joined the program in April 2021.
Her reputation went before her, with two decades of experience as a Power Five head coach and as a member of the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
Goestenkors was a head coach at Duke and Texas, an assistant coach in the WNBA with the Indiana Fever and Los Angeles Sparks, and had several coaching roles with USA Basketball.
This is to say Goestenkors has been there and done that when it comes to women’s basketball coaching.
So as her first season at Kentucky drew closer, she offered Elzy a new idea during practice.
“One thing (Goestenkors) challenged me with at the beginning of the season is every water break, let’s have a late-game situation, a side out of bounds or a baseline out of bounds,” Elzy explained Sunday. “So we probably have done 100 of those during the season. Our players were very composed and confident because we had went over it a thousand times, so we knew exactly what we were looking for.”
Even in these moments some extra faith is needed, though.
“Thank God the shot went in,” Elzy ended with.
One of Kentucky’s strong suits all season has been out of bounds plays, and the one drawn up in the most high-pressure moment of the season worked to perfection.
Senior point guard Jazmine Massengill opted to pass the ball wide to sophomore guard Treasure Hunt instead of to star guard Rhyne Howard, who flashed right by Massengill as she looked to inbound the ball.
Hunt held the ball high and strong against South Carolina’s Victaria Saxton, before handing the ball off to a curling Massengill.
Edwards, playing with four fouls, faked a screen and popped out behind the three-point line, while Aliyah Boston — South Carolina’s double-double machine and the likely National Player of the Year — shifted to her right, away from Edwards, to prevent Massengill from driving to the rim.
Remember the part about UK only being down one point thanks to Cooke’s missed free throws?
South Carolina also still had fouls to give, meaning that the potential of being fouled was omnipresent for Kentucky on this possession.
Massengill saw this, jumped in the air and passed the ball to Edwards, who caught and shot it without hesitation.
Pandemonium ensued.
Smith, a former college star at Kentucky, was one of the first people off the UK bench to celebrate with the Wildcats at midcourt.
A final play with numerous moving parts — and one that didn’t even feature Howard touching the ball — was explained in straightforward fashion by Edwards.
“It was whoever was open (was) going to shoot it, and they got me the ball and I was open,” Edwards said. “I had to let it fly.”
Elzy has often praised her coaching staff this season for actions both little and large.
For example, she credited Butts with doing a good job of scouting West Virginia ahead of UK’s home win over the Mountaineers in early December.
Then there was the big-picture credit Elzy provided after Sunday’s historic win.
“I knew we had been put in situations when our back was against the wall, and we had enough to step up. We’re a talented team. I was confident in them. I have an amazing coaching staff that just battled and worked nonstop, a support staff that encouraged us nonstop,” Elzy said.
Elzy also thanked UK Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart, who attended Sunday’s title-winning game in Nashville along with UK President Eli Capilouto and UK men’s basketball coach John Calipari and his wife, Ellen.
This Kentucky women’s basketball season can be divided into many segments or sections representing how poorly and well the Cats have played, as well as the number of players available to play.
But even prior to Kentucky’s title-winning trip to Nashville, when the Wildcats’ NCAA Tournament hopes were still up in the air, Elzy knew who to credit for helping make the late-season surge a reality.
“Obviously, we went through a lot of adversity, but I want to give a shout out to this coaching staff,” Elzy said after Kentucky’s final regular season game on Feb. 27. “We hit tough times and the coaches remained resilient. These assistant coaches … worked relentlessly on getting our players better, watching film, scouting, and the real MVP Courtney Jones, our athletic trainer, for getting everybody back to the floor and healthy. But this team always had great potential and we are peaking at the right time.”
This story was originally published March 6, 2022 at 8:49 PM.
