Kenny Brooks’ plan is to ‘just keep plugging away’ to elevate UK women’s basketball

Kenny Brooks hasn’t had much time to rest since his arrival in Lexington at the end of March.

After eight seasons leading Virginia Tech women’s basketball, Brooks opted to make the jump to UK and the Southeastern Conference — a move that made Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart and Big Blue Nation hopeful for the future of a program whose ceiling, up until this point, has stopped short of an NCAA Final Four appearance.

From the moment his hiring was official, Brooks has embraced any and all opportunities to lay the foundation for UK to one day become what he and Barnhart see as a real possibility — a consistently successful program on par with the tradition of basketball excellence that’s long been associated with UK men’s basketball.

An overwhelming thought to many, but Brooks told the Herald-Leader he’s taking things day-by-day.

“I’ve got all kinds of emotions depending on what day it is,” Brooks said. “I think that comes with the territory when it’s new. When you’re somewhere and you understand everything, you’ve been through it before, you put it on autopilot. You know when to ramp up, you know your emotions this way or that way, but when it’s new … I’m experiencing so many different things right now, still as a first, and so it keeps you on your toes.”

For Brooks and his staff, that groundwork looks like touching base with high-level prospects (high schoolers and transfers), recruiting trips (global and domestic) and a near-complete roster overhaul, among other tasks pertaining to schedule building and staff changes. After building respected programs at James Madison and Virginia Tech, Brooks understands that the path to winning is built step-by-step.

“You have to just keep plugging away,” Brooks said. “But it’s the way we operate, you know, down to our staff. We’re a big family, and I would not have been able to do anything that we did in the spring without them. And the way that they hit the ground running, the way that they operated in the chaos, because we hit the ground, and it’s like, it’s chaos. You’re learning a whole new system, a whole new athletic department, a whole new way of doing things. Which was very different than what we were, how we operated. But they did a tremendous job of handling that, all the while bringing in kids that we really wanted and trying to put it all together. So, we were exhausted by the end of the summer. But they’ve been tremendous.”

Due to those efforts, the Wildcats seem well-positioned to start the Kenny Brooks era on the right foot; the program is slowly gaining momentum, both on the recruiting trail and in the national spotlight. Suddenly, UK is on the radar of several top prospects in the high school class of 2025 and beyond, and it sneaked into ESPN’s latest edition of its way-too-early top 25, debuting at No. 25.

On top of his professional responsibilities, of course, Brooks and his family have had to deal with the typical challenges of moving. He’s grown more comfortable than he was when he first arrived, but there’s still plenty to do. Brooks and his wife, Chrissy, are working to make Lexington their home.

“It’s more stable, but it’s not stable,” Brooks said. “We finally closed on a house. So my wife is — fortunate for me, unfortunate for her — unpacking boxes, doing things without me. Just trying to get acclimated to, you know, ‘What’s the fastest way in to work?’ ‘When is traffic gonna be?’ Things of that nature. But we are more settled. I don’t need a GPS anymore to get to where I want to get to, and she’s learning, as well. When your family is good, then you can be good. And so it’s definitely more stable. But we still have a lot to learn about our area.”

Brooks, however, welcomes the challenge. A Virginia native, neither of Brooks’ coaching stops — Harrisonburg nor Blacksburg — were in particularly large cities. Leading a program based in a city with a population of more than 60,000 people is another first.

“It’s exciting,” he said. “It beats the alternative; I learned Blacksburg in probably two weeks. And from that point on, it was just the same thing every day. But here it’s a lot more things to explore. I’ve never been in a city that has so many wonderful places to eat. That’s probably something that people around here take for granted, but when you’re in a small town, it’s like — ‘OK, are we going here, or are we going there?’ And that’s pretty much it. And now we’ll have conversations as a staff when we’re sitting around not doing a whole lot. Someone will say, ‘Well, I went to this restaurant.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, that sounds good, what was that?’ So it’s been fun, refreshing, rejuvenating in a lot of different ways.”

Brooks’ move was made a bit easier by having his youngest daughter, Gabby, come along with him. A sophomore transfer from Virginia Tech, she is also joining the Wildcats ahead of the 2024-25 campaign.

“Having Gabby in tow with us here,” Brooks said. “It is good. And it was really good to be able to see her face as I was here, my wife was gone back at home … it’s pretty cool.”

The 5-foot-10 guard is one of 11 newcomers to Kentucky’s roster, and one of three transfers from Virginia Tech alongside All-America point guard Georgia Amoore and sophomore center Clara Strack. Brooks and his staff also managed to sign a trio of highly regarded Division I newcomers previously committed to the Hokies — junior college transfer forward Amelia Hassett, class of 2024 top-50 prospect Lexi Blue and touted international center Clara Silva.

Following the intense roster reconstruction, the question on many fans’ minds is whether or not Brooks will be able to get his team to gel in time for the start of the season. Brooks isn’t concerned, and he credits that confidence to the way he and his staff built the roster.

“Chemistry is good in the locker room, we’ve just got to get it better on the court,” Brooks said. “But they’re all good kids, and that’s something that is by design. We want to get people who are willing to sacrifice a little bit of themselves for the betterment of the team. And it’s not a me, me, me, I, I, I. I couldn’t have asked for a better group this summer, and the way that they’ve gone about their business. It’s very common that you’ll see, you know, (North Carolina transfer) Teonni Key with Amelia Hassett, and then you might see Amelia with Georgia (Amoore). It’s not clique-ish, they just kind of go out with their teammates, and they’re getting to learn each other.”

Though this new beginning looks different from Brooks’ early days at James Madison and Virginia Tech, he welcomes the challenge of creating a success story in today’s changing landscape of college athletics — even though it comes with sky-high expectations.

“The transfer portal didn’t exist,” Brooks said. “NIL didn’t exist, so you were building it a different way, and you knew that there was no way you were going to turn it around tomorrow. And now, when you come here with the transfer portal, and the NIL in this day and age of instant gratification, everybody wants everything done yesterday.”

The positive? High expectations for Brooks’ tenure just so happen to correlate with a great deal of community support.

“It’s a little bit different, a little bit different,” Brooks said. “But I’ll tell you what — the welcoming, the passion. I walked out of my apartment today, and the maintenance men were so excited about what’s gonna come. They said, ‘Have you got them ready yet, Coach?’ I’m like, ‘No, not yet.’ It’s been good. It’s been really good. The town has been great, so we’re excited.”

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