'It's just a matter of getting hot at the right moment': Kentucky WBB ready to make a run in SEC Tournament

Now that Kentucky has earned a double bye in the SEC Tournament, it’s time to go make a run in Greenville. Sure, the road to Sunday is tough, but the whole season has been tough. They’ve played in 16 SEC games so far, what’s three more, right?

Kenny Brooks won the ACC Tournament Championship at Virginia Tech in 2023, and he’s looking to duplicate that success in the best conference in the country. Some folks see conference tournaments as the tournament before the tournament, but Brooks isn’t going to the Palmetto State to come away empty-handed.

“A lot of people look at it differently,” Brooks noted. “Look at LSU, and LSU put the focus on the NCAA Tournament to rest Flau’jae [Johnson]. We look at it as okay, we went through the gauntlet, and we felt like here, there — other than Texas Game — I felt like we were in every game. We had an opportunity. The Texas game was kind of weird just because Clara Strack didn’t really play in that game. She was in foul trouble. Teonni [Key] was in foul trouble. So, we really don’t know exactly if we know what we can do against them if we have our full complement of players. We’re going to take them one game at a time, to be very honest with you, one game at a time, and we feel like if we can do that, then we can focus and we can give ourselves a chance to win.”

What gives Brooks confidence that his team can seriously compete for an SEC Tournament Championship? The fact that his team won 11 conference games in the regular season, and even in the five losses, they hung in there with some of the best teams in the sport.

“Obviously, our first round opponent — whoever it is — we beat them already, and so we know we can do that,” Brooks explained. “You know, our second round opponent, probably a team that we played close enough that we feel like we can win. The more we win, the better our seeding is going to be. So, yes, you want to win the SEC Championship, but you also want to position yourself the best you can for the NCAA Tournament. Someone texts me and they say, ‘Do you think you can get a 2-seed?’, and I never really thought about it, but I guess if you win the SEC Tournament, you probably will get a 2-seed. We feel like we have a chance, so we’re definitely going down there to put our best foot forward.”

Georgia Amoore was on that 2023 ACC Tournament Championship team as well, and she gave her two cents on what it takes to bring home some hardware.

“It’s called March Madness for a reason,” the All-SEC First Team point guard explained. “Anything can happen, it’s just a matter of getting hot at the right moment and trusting each other. It’s never going to be pretty. The conference wins we had in the ACC, they weren’t always pretty in the tournament, but we did what we had to do, and I guess that’s what you have to do — take advantage of what’s given to you.”

Clara Strack and Saniah Tyler also explained what they thought Kentucky needed to do in order to cut down the nets.

“We just have to play together, play like us,” Strack said. “We all play like ourselves every game, that’ll help us make a run.”

“[It’s gonna take] grit, being hungry,” Tyler then noted. “Obviously, one win isn’t going to give us what we want, but hopefully, that first win will give us what we need to win the SEC Championship.”

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