Despite 11-1 start, Kenny Brooks says comparisons to last year ‘not a benchmark for us at all’

On Saturday evening, following No. 16 Kentucky’s 88-70 victory over Western Kentucky in Memorial Coliseum, Kenny Brooks responded to a question regarding whether he viewed his team’s 11-win nonconference stretch as a success following last season’s 12-win overall total during the final year under former head coach Kyra Elzy.

Brooks replied that he isn’t holding his inaugural roster to any benchmarks or goals tied to that of past eras of Kentucky women’s basketball.

“What happened here last year, I wasn’t here,” Brooks said. “So it’s not a benchmark for us at all.”

So, regardless of the fact that the Wildcats (11-1) have almost matched the win total (12) in each of the past two seasons under Elzy, Brooks won’t let the 2024-25 Wildcats’ potential for success be defined or dictated by what happened before their arrival. Everything, just like the near-complete facelift of the women’s basketball program itself, is different.

“You set your own benchmarks for what you think that particular team can do,” Brooks said. “And so, everything that happened here last year, we don’t know. We have no idea. It’s kind of like the same thing when people tell me how beautiful Historic Memorial is compared to what it was. Well, I didn’t know what it was. So we’re just going off of what it is now, and that’s what we’re doing here. So 11 wins is really good out of (12) tries, and we’re going to continue to just try to win them all and just play good basketball every day.”

Though this year’s team operates and looks quite different from last season’s, Saturday’s win over Western Kentucky did include a double-figure scoring performance from junior guard Saniah Tyler, one of only two returners from the Elzy era. After totaling just 32 minutes across six games this season, Tyler delivered a season-high 11 points on 4-of-5 shooting (including 3-of-4 from beyond the arc) in just under 16 minutes on the floor.

Brooks, who’s relied almost entirely on his starting lineup of Georgia Amoore, Dazia Lawrence, Amelia Hassett, Teonni Key and Clara Strack for offensive production this season, said he’d had a heart-to-heart with Tyler ahead of Saturday’s matchup. Like Tyler, Brooks’ head coach was fired midway through his college career; if he wanted to continue to have a role on James Madison’s team under new coach Lefty Driesell, he’d have to remain committed to the process — something in which, according to Brooks, Tyler has never faltered.

“You go into your third year and you feel like you know a lot of what’s going on,” Brooks said. “Then all of a sudden, here comes a new coach who has a totally different system, totally different style, totally different everything. And it’s taken her a little while to understand what it is that I wanted, and we had a heart-to-heart. And I told her, I said, ‘You need to do all the little things. You need to play good defense. You need to come out there and give us things we don’t have.’

“And I said, ‘You just have to play hard, and you have to make me play you.’ And she had an opportunity tonight, and she stepped up and she did it. I was very happy for her because she’s been nothing but receptive to what we’re doing. Even though her minutes have like plummeted from last year, she has not been a distraction. And I would like for her be a little bit more assertive, but this is a spark that we need.”

Tyler was one of four Wildcats to finish in double figures against a Western Kentucky team that will carry a 9-3 record into Conference USA play.

Amoore and Strack each contributed 21 points in the victory. Amoore added three rebounds and nine assists, while Strack added 12 rebounds for the double-double, plus one assist and one block. Key finished with 15 points, six rebounds, three assists and one steal. Hassett added nine points, 12 rebounds, three assists, one block and two steals, and Lawrence finished with seven points, seven rebounds, six assists and one steal.

Despite Kentucky’s decisive victory and intentionally planned, “very bland game,” to keep future opponents off the scent of what Brooks’ team can really accomplish, he noted the matchup’s value in preparing the Wildcats for conference play.

“They have a very distinct style where they push it up,” Brooks said. “And they’re very aggressive and pushing it up almost to the point where if they make a mistake doing it, it’s OK. And so they did catch us a couple times where we were not back and ready to defend. And we’ll watch film tomorrow, and we’ll address that. And we understand that that’s going to be something that a lot of SEC teams will plan to play a similar style to that.”

Now less than a week away from Kentucky’s SEC opener against Mississippi State on Thursday, Big Blue Nation is taking notice of Kentucky women’s basketball. An announced crowd of 5,700 attended the Wildcats’ first win over the Hilltoppers since Dec. 22, 2003. Only UK’s Nov. 16 sold-out win over Louisville — which put an end to a seven-game losing streak against the Cardinals — has drawn a larger crowd this season.

Brooks called the crowd “unbelievable,” especially given that the game took place only a few days after Christmas. He later went on to praise his program’s ability to stay undefeated at home through nonconference play, the first time UK’s been able to do so since the 2020-21 season.

“You always want to protect home court,” Brooks said. “You value that. It’s a sense of pride. Because you play for more than just the team. You play for the name on the front, you play for Big Blue Nation, and when they come into the building you want to represent in front of them. And so for us to be able to go undefeated, putting together a new basketball team, is a sense of accomplishment for us. I’m very, very proud of that situation because to win a basketball game at this level is hard. It’s very hard. And so for us to be able to to win all of them so far that we’ve played through nonconference, I think it gives a sense of pride to BBN.”

Next game

Mississippi State at No. 16 Kentucky

When: Jan. 2 at 7 p.m.

TV: SEC Network+ (online only)

Radio: WLAP-AM 630

Records: Mississippi State 12-1, Kentucky 11-1

Series: Kentucky leads 32-24

Last meeting: Kentucky won 78-68 on Feb. 22, 2024, in Starkville, Miss.

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