Why Kenny Brooks says Kentucky is ‘a step ahead’ this basketball season
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Brooks prioritizes individual growth before full team workouts begin in July.
- Returning trio contributes nearly 47% of scoring and 71% of rebounding stats.
- Injured transfers and new signees bolster roster depth and on-court versatility.
Kentucky women’s basketball is just one week into its summer workouts, and Kenny Brooks is “super impressed” with what he’s seen from his Wildcats.
“Not only with their physical abilities,” Brooks said Tuesday. “The talent level, but their attitudes. Kind of like iron sharpens iron. ... Nobody comes and gets their time in and then they’re leaving. They stick around, they watch, they assess.”
As June winds down, the Wildcats are focused on individual sessions — born out of a desire to encourage individual improvement and retooling before moving into small groups in “the next two weeks,” and embarking upon full team work in July.
The goals aren’t out of the ordinary, not for any Division I team, and certainly not for one of Brooks’.
“Get through,” Brooks said. “Get in great shape, get stronger and stay healthy.”
Following an expectation-breaking inaugural season in Lexington, Brooks is back with more depth, more height on average and a developed culture prepped and ready to continue reestablishing Kentucky’s presence as a power, both within the ultra-competitive Southeastern Conference and beyond.
What sets UK apart, despite having lost leaders in first-round WNBA draft pick Georgia Amoore and infallible shooting guard Dazia Lawrence to exhausted eligibility and 6-foot-7 impact freshman Clara Silva to the transfer portal (TCU), is the returning core of Clara Strack, Amelia Hassett and Teonni Key — lovingly referred to by the program as “The Triplets.”
Strack, Hassett and Key combine to return 46.7% of UK’s scoring, and 70.85% of its rebounding. They each averaged at least 1.3 blocks per contest, including reigning SEC Defensive Player of the Year Strack’s team-leading 2.4 blocks per game, and propelled the program to its first-ever nation-leading blocks average (7.0) by the end of their first season in blue and white.
“I think it does give us a leg up,” Brooks said. “Give us a leg up on a lot of the competition because a lot of our key players, they know exactly what’s expected of them, and they’ll be able to provide even more. So that’s something that we’re going to hang our hat on, in order for us to have success right out of the gate. Just understanding each other, and that’s a big factor. And when we had the core come back, we knew that we were going to be a step ahead.”
Also bolstering the Wildcats’ 2025-26 roster are the delayed debuts of transfers anticipated by Brooks and his staff as “major contributors.” Last summer, injuries to 6-1 transfer guards Jordan Obi (Penn) and Dominika Paurová (Oregon State) rocked the intended season plan.
Obi, who sustained an undisclosed lower-leg injury during last summer’s workouts, eclipsed 1,000 career points while with the Quakers. As a senior in the 2023-24 campaign, Obi earned First Team All-Ivy League honors after averaging 14.7 points, a team-leading 7.7 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.4 blocks per game.
Paurová, who sustained an ACL tear while playing with Czechia’s U20 roster against Iceland last July in the FIBA Women’s EuroBasket, played in each of the Beavers’ 35 contests during her freshman season in 2023-24. With Oregon State, Paurová averaged 5.5 points, 2.1 rebounds and 1.4 assists in 16.4 minutes per contest.
Brooks, who announced Tuesday that Paurová was cleared Monday to participate in all on-court activities, called the duo “a secret that we know about,” and praised Obi and Paurová’s versatility, noting that he thinks it will elevate what UK is able to do on the floor.
“Because both of them are 6-1,” Brooks said. “We can play small with them, but they’re still long and athletic, or we can go extremely big. Their versatility is just going to provide something for us that I think a lot of people underestimate because they didn’t play last year or we didn’t get them in the transfer portal this year.”
Ahead of this season, Brooks signed a trio of transfers in Asia Boone (Liberty), Josie Gilvin (Western Kentucky) and veteran point guard Tonie Morgan (Georgia Tech). Kentucky will also welcome five-star freshman Kaelyn “KK” Carroll, a 2025 McDonald’s All-American out of Tabor Academy (Massachusetts) who graduated as the No. 18 national prospect in her class.
Though the roster is now complete at 12 players, UK still awaits the arrival of incoming freshman Elsa Vadfors, a 6-5 Swedish post player with junior national team experience who announced her commitment on May 18; the program has yet to announce her signing.
Nine of the Wildcats’ nonconference matchups, including the 2025 ACC/SEC Challenge game against Miami (Fla.), have been announced thus far, with additional contests expected to be revealed soon. UK fans also learned of the team’s SEC home-and-away designations, which include two games against fast-rising Vanderbilt, last week.
Brooks is confident that, now one year under his belt, the familiarity gained through a successful first season will only serve the program in year two.
“There’s a lot of movement in college basketball,” Brooks said. “And although we did add some very important pieces, the core, we have a good core back. A core that understands exactly what we want, how we want it, who’s actually been through it here at the University of Kentucky, so no longer are you ever going to go and not know what the SEC is going to be like, not knowing what crowds in Memorial are going to be like. So that familiarity is great.”
2025-26 UK women’s basketball schedule
Games confirmed to this point (home games in all capital letters):
Nov. 3: MOREHEAD STATE
Nov. 6: MONMOUTH
Nov. 9: At Buffalo
Nov. 18: PURDUE
Dec. 3: At Miami (Fla.)-x
Dec. 7: CENTRAL MICHIGAN
Dec. 14: At Belmont
Dec. 19: WRIGHT STATE
Dec. 28: HOFSTRA
SEC home games (dates TBA): Florida, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt.
SEC road games (dates TBA): Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Mississippi State, Tennessee, Texas, Vanderbilt.
x-ACC/SEC Challenge
This story was originally published June 24, 2025 at 3:18 PM.
