Kenny Brooks: 'You guys are gonna be excited next year when you watch Jordan Obi.'

Under Kenny Brooks, Kentucky has done some tremendous thing this year. After winning 24 total games in the last two seasons combined, the Cats went 22-6 (11-5 SEC) and finished fourth in the SEC after many thought they’d be more of a middle of the pack team this year.

Not only did Brooks do all of this with 11 players who weren’t at Kentucky last year, but two of those players — Dominika Paurová and Jordan Obi — would suffer lower leg injuries in the summer that would keep them from seeing the floor in the 2024-25 campaign. Both would have most likely been starters or at the bare minimum, key players in the rotation.

At Penn last season, Obi averaged 14.8 points, 7.7 rebounds and 2.3 assists per game, knocking down 38.6% of her shots from three-point range as well. Each year the 6-foot-1 wing showed signs of improvement on the stat sheet, and it seemed like she was destined for another big year, this time in Lexington.

Of course, the injury she suffered put a halt to those plans. Now, she had to go through rehab in order to get to where she could work her way into game shape again. Ever since she was cleared to do basketball-related workouts in January, she has had Brooks — as he would put it — salivating over what she can do. That has him excited for her return to the court.

“You guys are gonna be excited next year when you watch Jordan Obi,” he mentioned in his pre-SEC Tournament press conference. “Then you’ll be able to say, ‘Man, if they had Jordan Obi, what would they have been this year?’, and that’s kind of the way we feel.”

Brooks has managed to get Kentucky to this point by running a rather thin, 6-7 player rotation at times, but he’s right. One day, we probably will look back on this season and think ‘What if?’.

Until then, let’s just look forward to finally seeing her in blue and white and not in street clothes on the bench next season.

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