Kentucky women’s basketball needs a new point guard. Here’s what Kenny Brooks is seeking
How does one go about replacing All-America point guard Georgia Amoore?
It’s a question probably on the minds of many members of Big Blue Nation, who had the opportunity to watch Amoore help architect a Kentucky women’s basketball resurgence in just one season, the program’s first under Sporting News Coach of the Year Kenny Brooks.
The short answer, of course, is that one can’t. But that doesn’t change the fact that Brooks and his staff have been preparing for life without Amoore, who is projected to be a first-round pick in the WNBA draft come this April 14.
At the time of the writing of this article, UK had zero point guards on the roster for the 2025-26 season.
The Wildcats are set to welcome a highly touted point guard in the form of Maddyn Greenway, a four-time state champion with Providence (Minnesota) Academy and the daughter of former Minnesota Viking and Iowa Hawkeye Chad Greenway and former Iowa track athlete Jenni Capista Greenway. The problem? Greenway, rated the No. 18 prospect in her class, won’t graduate from high school until 2026.
Brooks spoke to the challenge of replacing Amoore on Tuesday during a SiriusXM appearance on “SEC This Morning.”
“First and foremost, I don’t know if you can replace her,” Brooks said. “You’re always going to need a point guard, and you may have to do it by committee. And we’ve been very careful that, as we recruit her replacement, that we’re not trying to make them be Georgia Amoore.”
UK experienced a record-breaking season with a roster featuring 11 faces brand-new to Lexington, including its top-six scorers. Outside of those who chose to follow him, in one shape or another, from his time at Virginia Tech — Amoore, Clara Strack, Gabby Brooks, Lexi Blue, Amelia Hassett and Clara Silva, the latter of whom is now in the transfer portal — Brooks was able to secure four additional commitments, each from the transfer portal. Teonni Key and Dazia Lawrence, both starters, served as necessary pieces to the Kentucky rebuild.
The other two, Jordan Obi and Dominika Paurová, were expected to be part of Brooks’ regular rotation but sustained offseason lower-leg injuries that rendered them unavailable in 2024-25. They both plan to return next season. Brooks, who regularly speaks to his vision of finding the “right fit” as opposed to aiming to sign the athletes with the best statistics, said he hopes “that continues for next year.”
“We assembled a group that was the right group,” Brooks said. “You know, you can go into the portal right now, and there are some kids in there that might average 22 points a game, and there’s a kid in there that might average 10 and that kid’s gonna be much better for you, your philosophy, and I think you just have to be careful, and we’ve done a really good job of that.”
Of course, on-court success and a return to the national stage only helps with recruiting. Brooks said that the “foundational year,” during which the Wildcats made it further in the postseason than they had since 2021 and posted their highest number of wins (23-8) since the 2018-19 campaign, “adds a lot of credibility to your program.”
This season, which he has called one of his favorite as a coach, reminded Brooks just how different the landscape of college athletics has become from what it once was. However, he said, the ever-changing nature of the game taught Brooks a long time ago “you either evolve or you become a dinosaur, and we all know what happened to dinosaurs.”
“With the portal, with the revenue share, with NIL,” Brooks said. “And then at the same time, you know, you have to be careful. You don’t want all of your actions to be transactional. You want relationships, and we continue to try to build on that, even as the sport is changing, but you need to evolve. And this year, it makes it even more special that we were able to be so successful in the first year. Not just because of the chemistry, but just really getting used to the landscape of college athletics, and it seems like it’s ever-changing.”
Kentucky is currently slated to have eight players on scholarship for the 2025-26 season: Blue, Brooks, Hassett, Key, Obi, Paurová, Strack and incoming five-star wing Kaelyn Carroll, the No. 15 national prospect in the high school class of 2025 and a 2025 McDonald’s All-American.
This story was originally published April 2, 2025 at 12:23 PM.
