‘This team can be great.’ Amelia Hassett’s big game helps Kentucky bounce back from loss.
With 7:59 to play in the third quarter of No. 16 Kentucky’s 87-45 win against Queens University of Charlotte on Monday night, the nearly 4,200 fans at Memorial Coliseum erupted as Amelia Hassett made a fast-break layup.
The junior forward — who spent the first two seasons of her college career at Eastern Florida State College in Cocoa, Fla. — surpassed 1,000 career points with that basket. She finished with the game with a season-high 19 points while making seven of her 14 field goal attempts (including three from long range) and tacked on six rebounds, three assists, one block and one steal against the Royals.
“It was a great feeling hitting that milestone,” Hassett said. “Props to my teammates for helping me get there. This team can be great. We have to put the work in. And yeah, I felt like (Kentucky) was a great fit and choice. And I just love the coaching staff and Coach Brooks.”
After the game, Kenny Brooks said he’d asked Hassett, “How do you assess your performance today?”
Hassett was, per Brooks, “politically correct,” and said she thought she could play better. He didn’t disagree with her, but it mattered to him to take the time to tell her, “Whatever she does, I trust her.”
“And, in nine games, she’s developed trust with me,” Brooks said, “that she’s not always going to be perfect but she’s gonna have perfect intent. And she’s usually in the right place. She usually knows where to be, what to do. There’s going to be some days where you’re going to see her make five or six 3-pointers in a game, but she just does a phenomenal job. When I recruited her, we probably said she was like a stretch 4. We’ve thrown her into a different position, and, not only has she blossomed in it, but she’s a force. People try to go after her on the perimeter, and she moves her feet very well and she contests the shots. I am tickled with her performance and think we can build off it, and she will have an even more prominent role for us as the season goes along.”
Hassett, who has made at least three 3-pointers in three games this season, including the last two, was just one example of the Wildcats’ intense desire to bounce back after their first loss of the season on Dec. 5 to North Carolina in this year’s SEC/ACC Challenge — a disappointing defeat on the road that, for the most part, saw a generally underwhelming performance from Kentucky’s typically standout starting five.
“I think sometimes we look at them, myself included, we almost look at them like robots,” Brooks said. “We expect them to come out there and just do exactly what they’re supposed to do each and every time they step out on the floor. And we didn’t play well at UNC. Had opportunities to get back into the game, just couldn’t get over the hump.”
Though it’s true that, per the NCAA’s NET rankings as of Tuesday morning, a Quad 1 loss to North Carolina (No. 16 in NET) in Chapel Hill and a Quad 4 home win over Queens (No. 348) don’t carry the same weight, Brooks said any opportunity to rebound after a loss is a good one.
“When you play at this level and you have a lot to play for,” Brooks said, “you can’t let one loss become two, becomes three. And so, we just really had to tell the team, ‘You’re not playing bad. You played bad.’ And so we had to get back at it, and the great thing about basketball is that you only have to wait three or four days for your next opportunity. And they were looking forward to it, so we got after them a little bit. We talked about having a sense of urgency in coming back out. And I thought they did a really good job stepping up tonight, and getting off to a really good start.”
The Wildcats opened Monday’s victory against the Royals (5-4) with a season-high 29 points in the first quarter, and scored 52 points in the first half — the latter an achievement that hasn’t happened for Kentucky since 2021 (50 first-half points against Winthrop on Nov. 21). They held Queens to 26.3% (15-for-57) from the field, sank 95% (19-for-20) of their free-throw attempts and dished 24 assists.
Royals junior forward Jordyn Weaver, who finished with a team-high 11 points, said battling the Wildcats served as an opportunity to prepare her team for league play in the Atlantic Sun.
“The take for this game that I got was, first of all, I really enjoyed playing against them,” Weaver said. “They’re a really good team, and I feel like it did help us see what we needed to work on defensively and offensively, and when we was, like, on a run offensively, it was like, ‘Oh, yeah, I think we could be prepared, with a team like that, we could definitely be prepared for ASUN Conference.”
The matchup provided Kentucky the chance to right the ship, and give each of the 11 healthy and available Wildcats time on the floor.
“We’re 8-1,” Brooks said. “Even after the game the other night, you know, it’s like gloom and doom. But we had to remind ourselves we were 7-1, we’re 8-1. Polls came out today, we were 16. So we’re still in good position, and we’re still working through it.”
Including Hassett, UK had four players reach double figures in the win.
Georgia Amoore finished with 20 points, four assists, one block and one rebound. Teonni Key added 12 points on 4-for-8 shooting from the field and recorded a career-high-tying 13 rebounds for her fifth double-double of the season. Key also totaled four assists, one block and one steal.
Clara Strack, Kentucky’s leading scorer, looked much more herself after a four-point game against the Tar Heels. Strack delivered 16 points on 50% (7-for-14) shooting from the field, and added six rebounds, two blocks, two assists and a pair of steals. Brooks said that, after “a rough go at it on Thursday,” Strack “felt really bad.”
“She asked me for extra,” Brooks said. “She wanted to shoot, she wanted to look at stuff. She felt really bad, and today was a good bounce back for her. And we’re going to depend on her a lot, but we just have to understand that we can’t put everything on her shoulders. So I was proud of her the way that she came out.”
The Wildcats will next face Power Four opponent Purdue (5-4) on Saturday in West Lafayette, Indiana, in the first game of a new home-and-home series.
Next game
No. 16 Kentucky at Purdue
When: 5 p.m. Saturday
TV: Big Ten Network
Records: UK 8-1, Purdue 5-4
Series: Purdue leads 2-0
Last meeting: Purdue won 97-67 on Dec. 1, 2000, in Lexington
