UK mailbag: Answering your Kentucky women’s basketball questions ahead of SEC Tournament
Following a whirlwind regular season, Southeastern Conference Tournament week is here!
Kenny Brooks and the Wildcats have shored up a fourth-place league finish and its consequent double-bye in the SEC Tournament, so the team won’t play again until Friday’s quarterfinals. The tournament at large gets underway Wednesday at Greenville, S.C.
In the meantime, we asked you to submit questions about Kentucky basketball and this week’s tournament for an inaugural women’s basketball mailbag.
Thank you for submitting your questions. Feel free to submit more via email or social media.
Let’s get to it!
Q: Who is the projected starting point guard next year?
It goes without saying that it would be impossible to replace Georgia Amoore, who was named a finalist for the Nancy Lieberman Point Guard of the Year Award on Monday alongside Connecticut’s Paige Bueckers, Texas’ Rori Harmon, Notre Dame’s Olivia Miles and UCLA’s Kiki Rice.
From experience, to accolades, to leadership to pure skill, Amoore is one of one. Ahead of this season, it was well-documented why her decision to delay what has the potential to be a long career in the WNBA was a seismic one, but those plugged in to Kentucky basketball — and so many beyond — have seen the importance of her move to Lexington, both for her own development and in the establishing of the foundation of the Kenny Brooks era. There’s not much point in playing ‘What if?’ but it’s hard to believe that Brooks would’ve been able to blow past outside expectations in the way he has without Amoore, who he’s referred to both as his mini-me and his fourth daughter. The graduate point guard and aspiring coach was named SEC Newcomer of the Year on Tuesday and will probably be part of All-America conversations.
The good news is that the Wildcats have prepared for life after Amoore’s graduation, and even have an exciting commitment in one Maddyn Greenway out of Providence Academy (Minn.), who recorded 32 points and 11 assists in the Lions’ 101-25 section quarterfinals victory over Holy Family on March 1. Greenway is the daughter of former Minnesota Viking and Iowa Hawkeye Chad Greenway and former Iowa track athlete Jenni Capista Greenway and, according to Providence head coach Conner Goetz, there’s room for comparison between Amoore and the No. 18 overall prospect in the class of 2026.
However, Brooks is development-focused, not to mention the fact that Greenway still has her senior year of high school ahead of her. The Wildcats signed 6-foot-3 five-star prospect Kaelyn “KK” Carroll out of Tabor Academy (Mass.) as their sole 2025 commitment, but she best operates on the wing — think Amelia Hassett or Lexi Blue, a strong shooter with hustle and height.
Cassidy Rowe and Saniah Tyler each have one year of eligibility remaining, but Brooks has carved out reliable relief roles for the hard-working junior guards. I expect next year’s starting point guard is not currently enrolled at the University of Kentucky, and would imagine Brooks and his staff will be dipping into the transfer portal for experience once again.
Q: Which players do you think will be the make-or-break standouts for the tournament?
Teonni Key is incredibly important to the long-term success of this team.
It’s something that Brooks has said all season long, Key being “the key” to what the Wildcats want to achieve. And, while it’s true that she’s had great performances in a few of the team’s losses — recording double-doubles against Texas A&M, Ole Miss and Texas — Key has also been sidelined for a lot of SEC play because of foul trouble.
It’s worth mentioning that the Wildcats pushed through a gauntlet to close out the regular season — and, besides what Brooks described as a “kind of weird” Texas game, Kentucky had a legitimate shot of defeating Ole Miss, LSU and South Carolina.
Against Oklahoma, Key posted just two points, six rebounds, two assists and one steal in 22:04 on the floor before fouling out. Yes, Kentucky came out on top against a top-15 team in what was a raucous environment, but that was the Amoore career game (43 points), plus Clara Strack and Dazia Lawrence combined for 33 points. Against ranked North Carolina in Chapel Hill — the Wildcats’ first loss of the year and sole nonconference blemish — Key recorded seven points, eight rebounds and one steal, but committed three personal fouls and four turnovers while playing for fewer than 26 minutes. Key plays with an energy that her teammates feed off of, and when she’s cooking, the offensive flow often does, too.
Though the stats sheet isn’t solely reflective of one’s impact, I do think Key’s importance is best illustrated by what happened against LSU. Key played just under 15 minutes in the loss, and finished with three personal fouls.
Key picked up two in the first quarter, didn’t play a minute of the second period and played less than two minutes of the fourth quarter when UK was attempting to pull off the upset. Though she played the entire third quarter — while the Tigers dug themselves out of a first-half hole by outscoring the Wildcats 23-6 — LSU successfully limited Key to one point, and that came via one of two free-throw attempts. The Tigers got Kentucky out of system, and circling Key was a big part of that.
For this team to make some noise in Greenville, it makes sense to need typical games from Strack and Amoore, or big shots at the “right time” from Lawrence or Hassett. But, in my mind, Key is the true make-or-break player for the Wildcats. If she can take the lessons learned from her first season of SEC officiating — she told me on Tuesday she feels confident in her and her teammates’ abilities to play smart and with aggression this weekend — it will only serve Kentucky’s tournament championship hopes.
Q: How do you think Kenny has prepared this team for the tournament in his first season? What strengths has he capitalized on? Where has he pushed the team to grow?
When Brooks took the UK job nearly a year ago, he referred to Kentucky women’s basketball as a “sleeping giant,” that he was excited to wake up. It was something I’d forgotten about until after the LSU game, when a media member referenced the quote during a question for Kim Mulkey.
Mulkey responded with a few separate points, including a semi-viral moment where she asked why the women play in Memorial Coliseum instead of Rupp; she shouted out UK greats Patty Jo Hedges and Valerie Still. Mulkey also took the time to speak to Brooks’ prowess, and how other coaches around the country view him.
“Wherever he’s coaching is not a ‘sleeping giant,’” Mulkey said. “Not for those of us who are in the business. We know what he’s going to do and what he’s capable of.”
Brooks, with his unique system, 10 NCAA appearances — including a 2023 Final Four run at Virginia Tech — six conference tournament championships and an approximate winning percentage of 72% through 749 career games, has still somehow over-delivered.
He is wont to remind folks that 11 of the 13 players on his inaugural roster were new to Kentucky. That the Wildcats aren’t as deep a team as they’d planned to be after the offseason injuries sustained by Jordan Obi and Dominika Paurová. That the majority of his program hadn’t experienced the ins and outs of the Southeastern Conference. Foul trouble. Illness. The kitchen sink always thrown at Amoore when it comes to containment efforts.
Now, navigating all that en route to a record of 22-6 (11-5 SEC), plus a fourth-place finish in a league that also now includes Oklahoma and Texas, that is impressive. But I’d venture a guess that it wasn’t a massive surprise to many coaches — see the SEC coaches voting Texas’ Vic Schaefer as Coach of the Year — or to several fans of his teams, past or present.
What’s more impressive, at least to me, is Brooks’ ability to sit back and allow his players to, one, bond without outside intervention or corny icebreakers, and two, learn on their own while consistently reminding his players of the fact that one can only “control what you can control.” The expectations are clearly outlined — “perfect intent,” the requirement — and the number of challenges only increase as the season progresses. Despite that, this team doesn’t appear to get stuck in unproductive cycles.
Take Sunday’s regular-season finale, which the Wildcats never led, but pulled within one three separate times in the fourth quarter at co-conference champion South Carolina. Per UK Athletics statistician Corey Price, Kentucky is “the first SEC team to trail South Carolina by one point or less at any point in the fourth quarter” of a game in Columbia since Mississippi State in January 2020.
As Amoore told me on Tuesday, “Did we shoot poorly? Yeah, we did,” but the Wildcats, for the most part, did not allow their mistakes, or South Carolina’s strengths, to take them out of the game.
The Wildcats who lost to North Carolina — struggling against more experienced players — are not the same Wildcats who lost to Texas A&M — defense deterred by shots that weren’t falling — are not the same Wildcats who will suit up in Friday’s SEC Tournament quarterfinals.
Through a lack of preexisting chemistry, injuries to projected contributors and a difficult first-year schedule, Brooks has encouraged his players to consistently elevate and step out of what roles they’d previously played — and it’s working. That type of growth and accountability fostered throughout a talented group is what leads to the kind of culture capable of postseason success.
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SEC Tournament
At Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, South Carolina. All times approximate and Eastern:
WEDNESDAY
Game 1: No. 9 seed Tennessee 77, No. 16 seed Texas A&M 37
Game 2: No. 12 Georgia 79, No. 13 Arkansas 74
Game 3: No. 10 Mississippi State 75, No. 15 Missouri 55
Game 4: No. 11 Florida 60, No. 14 Auburn 50
THURSDAY
Game 5: No. 8 Vanderbilt 84, No. 9 Tennessee 76
Game 6: No. 5 Oklahoma 70, No. 12 Georgia 52
Game 7: No. 7 Ole Miss 85, No. 10 Mississippi State 73
Game 8: No. 11 Florida 63, No. 6 Alabama 61
FRIDAY
Game 9: No. 1 South Carolina 84, No. 8 Vanderbilt 63
Game 10: No. 5 Oklahoma 69, No. 4 Kentucky 65
Game 11: No. 2 Texas 70, Ole Miss 63
Game 12: No. 3 LSU 101, Florida 87
SATURDAY
Game 13: No. 1 South Carolina vs. No. 5 Oklahoma, 4:30 p.m. (ESPN2)
Game 14: No. 2 Texas vs. No. 3 LSU, 7 p.m. (ESPN2)
SUNDAY
Championship game: Game 13 winner vs. Game 14 winner, 3 p.m. (ESPN)
This story was originally published March 5, 2025 at 10:00 AM.
