Everything Kenny Brooks said after Kentucky’s quarterfinal loss to South Carolina women’s basketball

Kentucky head coach Kenny Brooks spoke to the media following Kentucky’s quarterfinal defeat, 87-64, to South Carolina during the SEC Tournament.

Here is everything he had to say.

NEW! Message board for South Carolina Women’s Basketball! 🏀

Opening Statement

“When you spend a lot of time with each other, there’s a lot of different, I don’t know, just feelings, emotions, everything that goes along. And sometimes after a win, you can feel like you just didn’t give it your all. You are a little disappointed because you’re trying to get to an end result that you know you’re capable of.”

“And then sometimes you don’t play as well, and you don’t win a basketball game, but you’re super proud of your kids. This is one of those moments. And I am so proud of their effort, not only today, but the last three days, and we’re going to continue that. We’re going to build off of that. That’s exactly what we wanted from this experience right here. I think we’re going to be a team that’s going to be able to play a lot of basketball here in the next couple of weeks. So very, very proud of my kids.”

Coach, congratulations on the first two wins there. Do you feel like you’ve done enough to get one of those top 16 and to host? What do you think there?

“I honestly don’t care. We’ll go anywhere and play. As long as we get an opportunity. What we wanted out of this, the last couple of days, was to make sure that we got better as a basketball team and to make sure we came out of this thing healthy. And that was mission accomplished.”

“And we want to host. We want to host. We feel like we deserve to host. But we’re not putting all our eggs in a basket, emotionally, to try to figure out and to say if we’re going to host or not, and if we don’t get it, then we’re going to be upset. We’re not. We’ll go anywhere and play anybody. That’s how much confidence we have in each other. So we’ll sit back this week, and we’ll rest, and we’ll fine-tune some things. And then we’ll get ready for wherever we’re playing.”

It’s been a tough week, four games in, I think, six days, twice against South Carolina. What have you learned this week that you’re going to take with you?

“I love my kids. We had a really good week. We had a really good week. I’m not talking about whether we won a game or lost a game. We did a lot of things this week that a coach will look at and he’ll see or she’ll see, and we grew. We grew. We have some areas, you know, mentally that we needed to improve on, and we needed to play with a little bit more joy.”

“We needed to do a lot of different things, and we did that. I was very proud of our kids. As I sit up here and talk to you guys, you know, I knew this team had so much potential, but we were missing an element. And I think that we found it. And they’re playing with joy. They love each other. They love playing with each other. They’re connected now, and we’re going to keep that, fine-tune it, and then see what happens in the NCAA Tournament.”

You’ve gone on record as saying officially how much you love this SEC Tournament. What have you really learned from this experience, and what are some of the specific improvements that your team took this week?

You are being facetious, right? That wasn’t, I don’t think I’ve ever said that I love this SEC
Tournament. It’s taxing. It’s very taxing. You go through a grueling 16-game schedule, and to
nobody’s fault but our own, we put ourselves in a situation where we had to play five games to get to the prize. Today, I had championship-day fatigue. What I mean by that is usually for you to get to the championship game, you’ve had two grueling games, and then you play a
championship game. This is our third game.”

“And for us to have to come out and you play, and that’s why I’m so proud of my kids, man; they did not stop fighting. And they were tired. They were exhausted. And part of my responsibility and my contract says that I have to win basketball games. But part of my responsibility is to take care of them and make sure that they don’t hurt themselves, and today they were fatigued. They were very tired. And then you come, and we’re not there yet. We’re not there yet to challenge for an SEC championship. We’re going to continue to get better to where we can.”

“But I’ll tell you what, I know Vic [Schaefer] is probably a little upset, and Kim [Mulkey is] probably a little upset. That’s just a home game for South Carolina. And it’s hard enough to do it, to play against a really good basketball team. And we’re not there yet. So don’t get me wrong. I’m not whining for us. But we’ve got great teams in this conference, great teams in this conference. It’s taxing, it’s hard. I am elated right now that we’re walking out of here healthy, so that we can go out and we can prepare, and I think we have a chance to make a
really long run in the NCAA Tournament.”

Coach, talk about the confidence that Amelia Hassett has been playing and shooting with right now?

“I’m very proud of her. Everybody knows she’s a 3-point shooter. And she finds her way.
She does so many things for us other than just the 3-point shooting. She’s a wonderful kid, and she really helps us get going.”

“And it’s been a joy to coach her for these past two years. We’ve asked her to do things that she’s never been comfortable doing. She’s a stretch 4 by nature. And we’ve got her playing the two-guard. And she’s never complained. She goes out. She guards the best player on the other team. Sometimes she’s successful. Sometimes she’s not. But she’s always going to give her best effort. And when you have kids like that, you can do a lot of different things, and it makes it a joy to be a coach.”

🏀 GamecocksW newsletter: WBB coverage delivered straight to your inbox!

You challenged Clara Strack before this tournament. Obviously you don’t get the win today. She mentioned just a few minutes ago about in terms of she doesn’t necessarily look at the stat sheet, but how would you assess her game today?

She was tired. She was exhausted. Her opponent was sitting at home while she was playing 75 minutes. And, again, that’s on us. We put ourselves in that predicament where we had to be the No. 9 seed and we had to play for five games. But that kid goes out, and she plays to her fullest every second that she’s on the floor. I saw it very early that she had that look on her face that she was trying to push through something that she probably couldn’t push
through.”

“And it was my responsibility to make sure I didn’t put her in a bad situation, because she would have tried to get every loose ball, every rebound, try to get it. I thought she played a little straight up today. They were able to push her off her mark a little bit. She was tired,
extremely tired. So, she’s a warrior. She is. She makes us go. And I wouldn’t trade her for anybody in the country because she epitomizes everything that I want in a student-athlete and a student-athlete at the University of Kentucky.”

What does it mean heading into the tournament after two big games in the SEC Tournament from Strack?

“No, today, withstanding, because she did so much for our kids. She was not going to stop. It
didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that she was playing against somebody that was fresher. It didn’t matter there was two people on her. She was still going to play hard.”

“She mentioned it, whether she’s scoring a point or not scoring a point, she’s going to try to do whatever she can to help us win. So you can include this game just as valuable as the ones she played, the two before that, because that is the epitome of what we want to be, even if things aren’t going spectacular for her, you can still do other things. She’s the ultimate. Like I said before, and I’ll say it a million times, I wouldn’t trade her for anyone.”

Fatigue notwithstanding, and when you looked at this game at South Carolina, what stands out when you’re trying to prepare for them? What is the toughest thing to prepare for them as you’re going in?

“Yeah, this league is very good. So every time you prepare for any team in this league, you
can play one night and you’ve got to cover Blakes, and then you look at the score sheet and the next game, who is your opponent the next game, and you’ve got to look, and it might be Madison Booker. And it can be a lot of different players; you’ve got to play Mikayla Blakes again. You’ve just got to go and be ready, prepared, because this is the best conference in the country.”

It’s a privilege to be able to play in this conference. It’s a privilege to be able to compete in this conference. So every night, you know you’re going to get someone’s best shot, but every night you know you’ll play against great players. I started off my career at a mid-major, James Madison, and I remember we just had to play against one player on the opposing team, who we had to worry about. It might have been Elena Delle Donne, but you could put three people on her; you didn’t have to worry about the other players. You come to the SEC, and everybody’s good. It’s a notch below the WNBA. It’s a privilege to be able to compete in this league, and it’s a privilege to be able to go against such great players.”