Teonni Key, left, and Amelia Hassett are two of UK’s five seniors and they were certainly ready to go at Friday’s open practice in Texas. (Vicky Graff Photo)
Does the pressure of knowing a loss will be the end of their collegiate careers put more pressure on Kentucky’s five seniors going into Saturday afternoon’s regional semifinal matchup with favorite Texas in Fort Worth, Texas”
“That’s a good question. I would say that I try not to look at it as pressure, because basketball is a sport. It’s a game. It’s supposed to be fun,” Kentucky point guard Tonie Morgan, UK’s single season assists leader, said. “I do realize that at any moment this could be my last collegiate game, but I try to have fun with the last moments on the court with my teammates at all times.
“Just keep it light-hearted because pressure can make you a little tense, so just stay flowing and knowing that you can keep playing as well.”
Forward Teonni Key feels the same way.
“Just being where your feet are and cherishing every moment. I think this group is so special. So this year has been up and down, but it’s been so special, so much that we’ve learned from it,” Key said. “This is what you play for. You play knowing that you want to go to — you want to play in March.
“You want to make deep runs in March, but in March it’s win or go home. I think there’s no pressure, because it’s just what we work for all year.”
Jordan Obi, Amelia Hassett and Josie Gilvin are Kentucky’s other seniors and coach Kenny Brooks likes having that experience and maturity on his team for this NCAA game.
“They’ve seen a lot, which was evident for us when we went into West Virginia and it was 13,000 screaming Mountaineer fans, and we didn’t get rattled at all because they had all been through it,” Brooks said Friday. “I bet you a lot of the rosters that are still here are senior-laden. They have a lot of experience. Obviously with the transfer portal, that’s kind of the way things have gone. You see a lot of older basketball teams.
“So for us it’s paid dividends. Just their maturity and they’ve been through so many different environments. That’s helped us a lot. I mentioned it earlier that we’ve had some really tough road games that we came out on top of, and it was because of that senior leadership.
“It’s done a little bit differently now because they’ve all come from different places, and it took us a little while to try to mesh and try to get the leadership hierarchy down, and it happened, but we wanted it to happen organically. It has, and it’s morphed into something that now we feel that we have great leadership, we have great maturity, and it can help us win basketball games.”
Brooks has totally rebuilt the Kentucky roster since arriving from Virginia Tech two years ago. Last season UK won one NCAA Tournament game and this year it has already won two with a chance to win a third Saturday.
“I think obviously I think he’s a great coach,” all-SEC center Clara Strack, a junior, said. “I came with him here, but I think he has a good — he does a good job at getting a lot out of his players and then being able to get us all to play together. We haven’t all played together for a long time, so I think being able to build that chemistry with the team and then able to get a lot out of us …”
“He does such a good job of just coming to us and having an open flow. Allowing us to come to him too as well and just helping us grow as individual players, helping us come together, and then just helping us help each other too,” Key said.”Showing us how we can help our other teammates and how their games can get better as well. I think it’s just that he’s a great coach.”
One Response
The Lady Cats were as prepared for their last game as much as the men. So much for the WVU tuneup. They had 24 turns vs. 20 for the men's. Morgan had 8 turns. They had more turns than FG's..24/19. Not sure how the year will be judged but they were very streaky with qtr to qtr consistency much like men. They lost 1st qtr 24-11 and that was GAME.