When Kenny Brooks gave up his very good situation at Virginia Tech to come to the University of Kentucky, he arrived in Lexington with a bold vision for what women’s basketball at UK can be.
“I was winning (at Virginia Tech) but I wanted to win at a different type,” Brooks says. “I wanted to go to a different level.”
Simply put, Brooks believes the brand “Kentucky basketball” can be leveraged to build a women’s program at UK that is among the nation’s elite.
On Saturday night — with a capacity crowd pumping energy into a Memorial Coliseum that now gleams after in excess of $80 million of renovations — Brooks gave Kentucky fans a glimpse into the big, bold future he envisions for Wildcats women’s hoops.
In Brooks’ fourth game as top Cat, No. 20 Kentucky beat No. 18 Louisville 71-61 in overtime before a boisterous crowd of 6,117.
The victory allowed UK to snap a seven-game losing streak vs. its intrastate archrival.
It also ended a stretch of 13 consecutive Kentucky defeats against teams ranked in the AP Top 25.