A lot of Interest Already in UK Job According to Mitch Barnhart

Vicky Graff Photo

Kentucky athletics director Mitch Barnhart said Monday night that a “lot of people” have already called about the vacant women’s basketball head coach opening after Kyra Elzy was fired Monday after four years as UK’s head coach.

“What we have found is that this is a good destination for someone,” Barnhart said. “There’s a lot of interest. We’ve had a lot of people call today.”

Barnhart took Elzy’s normal spot Monday night on the UK Radio Network to talk about the change and what lies ahead. He said he had staff members helping him and he plans to take a broad, national look for the next coach.

“We’ve got a lot to offer at the University of Kentucky. I think that’s really, really important. So when you think about the things that have been built over the last 15 years in our women’s basketball program, we’ve had some incredible wins,” he said.

“We’ve had an opportunity to win a conference championship, a regular season title and a tournament title, and there’s not a lot of schools that have done that. And clearly we want to build on that.”

Barnhart thanked Elzy for her “incredible love” for the program as an assistant coach and then head coach. He said there are “never easy days” when certain decisions have to be made.

“I want to thank her and have so much respect for her as a person, and think that she will continue to do amazing things somewhere in her journey. And we wish her all the best,” the UK AD said.

Barnhart talked about wanting UK to be able to challenge the best teams in the NCAA (nine are expected to be selected for this year’s NCAA Tournament) but knows there will need to be a roster overhaul.

“In the world that we’re in, within the transfer portal and all of those things, the rosters are fluid,” Barnhart said. “And that doesn’t mean that’s where we want to live, or we want to build out of all that. There’s gonna have to be some pieces of continuity to what we have, and then build out of that through the things that are available to us.”