Kyra Elzy previews SEC Tournament matchup vs. Tennessee: 'We're going to fight'

Kentucky and Georgia tipped off the 2024 SEC Tournament on Wednesday afternoon. The Wildcats emerged with a 64-50 win over the Bulldogs and will advance to play Tennessee on Thursday.

The Wildcats and Lady Vols met one time during the regular season, seeing Tennessee win handily at home. After the opening round SEC Tournament win, head coach Kyra Elzy revealed her initial thoughts on the rematch.

“We’re just a better team. We’ve had time to grow up. We’re still going to make some mistakes but I think we have learned along the way,” Elzy said. “I thought we went to Knoxville, put up a tough fight. Obviously came out losing by 18, but a lot of lessons learned there.

“At the end of the day, we’re going to fight tomorrow. We’re going to give our best. We’ll go back and watch the film. One of the things we know we have to do against Tennessee is rebound and defend. So nothing has changed there.”

The Wildcats are 4-11 since the loss to the Vols. However, the SEC Tournament begins a brand new season — something Kentucky knows all too well. In 2022, Kentucky ran the gauntlet and eventually defeated eventual national champion South Carolina in the tournament final with Rhyne Howard leading Elzy’s squad after winning four-straight games.

Despite Kentucky’s woes this season, they were able to pull off a double-digit win over the Bulldogs without senior guard Maddie Scherr, who is the team’s second-leading scorer on the year. The team announced that she would miss Wednesday’s game due to her being in concussion protocol. It turned out to be no issue for the Wildcats against Georgia, but her status for Tennessee remains unknown as of this report.

Instead, Eniya Russell lit up the scoreboard with a 19-point performance off the bench. It’s her fourth-highest scoring mark of the season for the senior who averaged 9.8 points per game. Brooklynn Miles and Ajae Petty scored 11 points each to round out Kentucky’s scoring leaders during the win.

Kentucky has now won seven of its last eight SEC Tournament games dating back to 2022’s conference tournament run. They’ve also won at least one game in the event in each of the last three years.

For the Lady Vols, they split their last two games of the regular season. However, those two losses were against the top two seeds in the conference tournament, South Carolina and LSU. While those two losses were to ranked opponents, it made the Vols finished fifth in the final SEC standings. They missed out on the double bye and are tasked with facing Kentucky on Thursday.

Tip-off is scheduled for 2:30 p.m. ET live on the SEC Network.