Kenny Brooks wanted 'another marquee home game', but the SEC/ACC Challenge messed that up

If you look at Kentucky’s non-conference home slate, you’ll notice that it’s… weak. As of right now, we know that Kentucky will face Morehead State (Nov. 3), Monmouth (Nov. 6), Purdue (Nov. 18), Central Michigan (Dec. 7), Wright State (Dec. 19) and Hofstra (Dec. 28) in Historic Memorial Coliseum.

That isn’t exactly a murders’ row of opponents.

Purdue, the only major conference opponent listed above, went 10-19 last season. The Cats squashed the Boilermakers by 30 last year up in West Lafayette. It’s unfortunate that we really have to wait until SEC play before we see Kentucky take on a formidable opponent at home, but that certainly wasn’t what Kenny Brooks had in mind when forming this year’s schedule.

Brooks understands the importance of having big home games. He made an effort to get a high-profile opponent in Lexington this winter, but it just didn’t work out. It also doesn’t help that Kentucky will be playing on the road in the SEC/ACC Challenge (@ Miami) for the second consecutive season.

“It’s harder. It really is,” Brooks said of the schedule-building process. “Last year, when we started to build the schedule, it was harder than I thought. We had some people even try to back out. They said, ‘We didn’t sign up to play this Kentucky. We signed up to play a different Kentucky.’ For us this year, it was harder and harder.”

Fortunately, there’s still a couple of games that are still to be announced by the team. By the sound of it, those may be exciting games for Big Blue Nation.

“I know that we released some games [Tuesday], but we still got a couple more to be released I think people will be excited about,” Brooks added. “The one thing that we really didn’t get this year that I wanted was another marquee home game, but I anticipated that we were gonna play an SEC/ACC Challenge game here because we went last year on the road. But for whatever reason, they stuck us on the road again. So, we’ll just handle it.”

When Brooks was asked if he got an explanation of any sort regarding why Kentucky was sent on the road two years in a row in the SEC/ACC Challenge, he revealed that he did. But… it wasn’t a good explanation by any means, apparently.

“It’s an explanation, but it’s not a good one. It’s an explanation,” Brooks answered. “But it is difficult because we anticipated playing an ACC opponent here. Then, when you put the schedule together — I think [the SEC/ACC Challenge matchups] got released last week or so — then you can’t scramble to try to do other things because those marquee opponents already have their schedules done too. So, just kind of put us behind the eight ball a little bit, but we’ll just do what they tell us.”

“We feel like we have a really good schedule that’s going to challenge us with the chemistry — get us going,” Brooks mentioned. “Our SEC schedule shifted. We no longer play Georgia twice; we play Vanderbilt twice. Vanderbilt is going to be probably a top 15 team. So, I thought we did a good job with the schedule. Like I said, we got a couple more games we’ve got to announce that will challenge us and put us where we want to get to, but scheduling has become difficult because not a lot of people want to play. So, it’s really hard to find those opponents that you want.”

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