Saniah Tyler could be the difference in a "good" or "great" Kentucky WBB team

With last year’s Kentucky women’s basketball team, there just weren’t a whole lot of talented depth pieces available. Sure, Maddie Scherr and Ajae Petty carried a lot of the load, but they’ve both gone to different schools now. Beyond them, the rest of the team was far too inconsistent offensively to be considered serious and viable scoring options. If Scherr and Petty weren’t clicking, the whole team wasn’t clicking.

Additionally, six of Kentucky’s top seven scorers from last season are gone now. Emma King ran out of eligibility, and everyone else ran out of town. So, who’s that lone player remaining amongst those top seven scorers? Well, that would be rising junior Saniah Tyler.

By the end of the season, Tyler became one of the more reliable offensive weapons at Kyra Elzy’s disposal. The most impressive part about her sophomore campaign was the jump she made from her first year in Lexington.

As a freshman, Tyler scored only 0.7 points per contest in just nine total appearances. Back in December, Tyler’s mother spoke to KSR, detailing just how demoralizing her freshman season was. To put it shortly, Tyler is the embodiment of the old adage of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”.

Then, fast forward to this past season, and she was the third-leading scorer on the team, averaging 10.2 PPG while shooting a serviceable 34.5% from deep.

How big of a leap can Saniah Tyler take next season?

That brings us to now. As of right now, the 2024-25 roster has a lot of unproven talent on it. Other than Georgia Amoore, we haven’t really seen anyone else leave a huge stamp on this level yet. However, Tyler showed us last season that she is very capable of producing against SEC-caliber competition.

We’ve already seen Tyler make a huge jump from year one to year two. So, how big of a jump can she make in year two to year three? Better yet, how big of a jump does she need to make? Let’s play out the scenarios.

If she scores roughly 10 PPG like last season, then you can probably be happy about where things stand. Last season, Tyler was forced to shoot at a high volume at times, which ultimately got her more points on the stat sheet. However, she has shown that she best thrives as an off-the-ball and secondary scorer. She’ll need to cash in efficiently when given the chance next season.

However, if she can manage to elevate her numbers in a productive way, say she scores 13-15 PPG on roughly 38-41% shooting from three, then that’s a huge positive. At that point, you have to really start thinking about a deep run in the SEC Tournament and even a solid run in the NCAA Tournament.

Tyler could very well end up being the “X-factor” on this team. If she can maintain her level of play from last season, then Kentucky will be in good shape. If she can take that next step, however, then Kentucky becomes a real threat to make some March noise.