‘The SEC is learning who she is.’ Clara Strack an unstoppable force in UK’s latest win.
No amount of planning could prepare Georgia for what it confronted Sunday afternoon in Athens.
“The height difference was just so (the players) were like, ‘Whoa! They’re big,’” Georgia women’s basketball coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson said. “You know what I mean?”
By the time the Bulldogs were able to adjust, 12th-ranked Kentucky was well on its way to a 78-64 victory, its ninth in a row overall and its fifth straight to start Southeastern Conference play.
Kentucky’s starting frontcourt of Clara Strack, Teonni Key and Amelia Hassett stands 6-foot-5, 6-4 and 6-3. Clara Silva, who goes 6-7, came off the bench. Georgia countered with 6-5 Fatima Diakhate, 6-1 Miyah Verse and a trio of guards all 5-9 or smaller.
The Wildcats (16-1, 5-0 SEC) worked their way to a 23-4 advantage after the first 10 minutes, and ballooned their lead to 44-21 by halftime.
Abrahamson-Henderson took advantage of the break in the action to refocus her charges.
“At halftime, we really told them, like, ‘You can get in ‘em and be aggressive.’”
Georgia (9-11, 1-5) bounced back to outscore UK 43-34 in the second half but the rally was too little, too late.
Clara Strack showing SEC what she can do
Sophomore center Clara Strack continued to emerge as an unstoppable, overwhelming force for a Kentucky roster off to its best conference start in over a decade (UK opened SEC play 6-0 in 2012-13). She was one of three Wildcats to finish in double-figure scoring, and one of two to grab at least 10 rebounds.
After the game, Kentucky head coach Kenny Brooks told Darren Headrick, the radio voice of the Wildcats, that Strack was “tough all night long,” and that he was “very, very proud of her growth and the way she comes out and she plays hard.”
“We’re a good, balanced team,” Brooks said. “And we play a little bit faster than my teams have in previous years. And obviously, because Clara Strack is so agile and mobile, she gets up and down the floor, plays on the perimeter and just makes the lane a lot cleaner and open. And the kids are doing a really good job of taking advantage of that, so it’s really good. They’re playing off of each other. They’re doing a terrific job. And we can be better, but, you know, to win on the road by double digits in the SEC, you’ll take it.”
Strack finished with a game-high 25 points and 12 rebounds for her eighth double-double of the year, and added four assists and one block. She committed zero turnovers in 38 minutes.
“BBN, you’re lucky,” Brooks said. “You get to watch this kid for two more years after this one, and she’s special. And that’s the thing, I just think the SEC is learning who she is. Name me a post player that can do what she does. ... I mean, she had 12 rebounds, and so, she’s special. She really is.”
Strack, who also bolsters the Kentucky defense alongside Key and Hassett, is so effective, in part, because of her versatility on the floor and ability to play all five positions — even in the face of SEC opponents.
“We have so many kids who can, in a pinch, bring the ball to the floor,” Brooks said. “And they’re good passers, and they look for each other and you find each other. In particular, Clara Strack. You put her at the point of it, and, when people try to double-team (point guard) Georgia (Amoore), she’s so good at being that secondary point guard for us. And she just really finds people, and she finds them and she’s very accurate with her passes, and she doesn’t hesitate. She sees it one play at a time.”
Through 17 games, Strack is averaging 15.9 points, 9.8 rebounds and nearly 2.5 blocks in 31.9 minutes per contest — after clocking only 13.9 minutes per game as a freshman last season at Virginia Tech.
“We watch film, and I’ll slow a play down, and she’ll make a marvelous pass, and I’m like, ‘Well, what were you thinking there? What did you see? How did you see her?’ And she just kind of shrugs her shoulders and she says, ‘I don’t know. I just saw her.’ And that’s greatness. It really is. Because if you ask the great ones, ‘How do they do it?’ They really can’t explain it. They just do it. And what she has is something that, even if you tried to teach it, it wouldn’t be as fluid, it wouldn’t be as organic and it wouldn’t be as special as the way she does.”
Kentucky’s ‘locked-in’ defense puts away Georgia
Hassett contributed 14 points and 10 rebounds for her double-double, plus one block and one steal. Amoore added 24 points, eight assists and one block, but Georgia’s consistent pursuit of her led to an uncharacteristic seven turnovers. Key finished with nine points, four rebounds and one steal.
Georgia’s leading scorers this season, Trinity Turner and De’Mauri Flournoy, did not score until the second quarter Sunday as Kentucky limited the Bulldogs to 1-for-16 shooting in the opening 10 minutes.
But the duo led Georgia’s second-half push into Kentucky’s significant lead and finished with 19 points each. Though its comeback came much too late, Georgia did manage to end Kentucky’s five-game streak of winning by at least 16 points.
“Our defense is good,” Brooks said. “When we are out there, we’re locked in. I think a lot of people are trying to get to understand it and know it because we play so different than everybody else in the SEC. But it’s still an effective way to play defense. And we were locked in that first quarter, understanding the scout. They scored four points, and three of them were because we made a mistake.
“And so when they’re locked in like that, they’re really good. And I thought it carried over to the second quarter, and then the third and fourth quarter. Georgia, they were in desperation mode, where they were just putting their head down and going to the basket. And we’ve got to learn how to continue to play, even though we have a big lead, and try to push that lead out even more.”
Sunday marked UK’s first win in Athens since Feb. 25, 2021, and means the Wildcats have an opportunity to extend their win streak over the Bulldogs to three games on Feb. 16 when Georgia comes to Memorial Coliseum.
Next game
No. 12 Kentucky at Texas A&M
When: 7 p.m. EST Thursday
TV: SEC Network
Radio: WLAP-AM 630
Records: Kentucky 16-1 (5-0 SEC), Texas A&M 9-8 (2-3)
Series: Texas A&M leads 10-5
Last meeting: Texas A&M won 61-44 at Rupp Arena on Feb. 11, 2024
