Starting Strong

(MORGANTOWN, W.V.) – Robin Sharma once said, "Starting strong is good, finishing strong is epic."  For the University of Kentucky women's basketball team, they had the first part of that saying down very well, not so much on the last part. 

After the end of the first quarter of Saturday's first round NCAA Women's Tournament game, the UK women had roared out to a 32-10 lead over the Dukes of James Madison.  They expanded that margin to a 43-18 advantage at halftime.  The second half was a much a different story as the Dukes outscored the Wildcats by a ten-point margin.  However, James Madison had too steep of second half mountain to climb and UK then pretty much breezed to 71-56 victory.  The game was played in sold-out,14,000 seat, Hope Coliseum, on the campus of West Virginia University.  UK now will play WVU on Monday night, in Morgantown, for the right to advance in tournament play.  If UK is victorious, the next round of the tournament will be held in Fort Worth, Texas.

After the game, UK's head coach, Kenny Brooks, said, "You know what, we were very fortunate to get up as much as we were, and we have a game on Monday night, and whichever opponent it is, was sitting there watching us. So we were going to be as vanilla as possible."  In other words, Brooks knew that UK was in control and there was no use to show their next opponent any new wrinkles. 

"It’s March. We wanted to come out full swing ahead. We wanted to know we’ve arrived here and we did not want to go home," UK senior guard, Tonie Morgan exclaimed.  Morgan led all scorers with 18 points, along with dishing out a team leading seven assists.  She also was an outstanding plus 24 for the contest.  Seven of eight UK players were in the plus column at game's end.  In contrast, eight JMU players finished in the minus column. "It felt fun finding my teammates, getting everybody involved. We were happy to be back out there (UK had been idle for more than two weeks)," Morgan stated.  "So, just knowing that I was able to contribute to our big start felt great, and then my teammates also helped bring us all along."

Coach Brooks was quick to point to Australia native, Amelia Hassett, as one of the key cogs that makes UK go night in and night out.  "Amelia is fantastic, one of the most enjoyable players I’ve ever coached in my life and I’ve only had her for two years, but she is just really team oriented and does everything she has to do, and when she’s knocking down shots like that, it gives us the ability to separate.  Another thing, too, is she’s a big, big, big guard, so it really helps us rebound the basketball," Brooks stated.

Coach Brooks said it was a hard game for him.  He graduated from James Madison and was the head women's basketball coach at his alma mater from 2003-2016.  "I didn’t sleep right. I woke up at 2:30 this morning. It was really hard to get back to sleep just because of the anxiousness. But I’m very proud of my kids for really coming through for me," Brooks stated.

JMU coach, Sean O'Regan, who was at one time Brooks' assistant at JMU, stated, "I thought  we had a really bad start, a really bad (first) quarter.  Their length was really bothersome and I think it affected our ability to make shots early, (and) affected us on the glass as well."

In a post-game interview with Nolan Group media, senior forward, Teonni Key was asked if the raucous WVU crowd that will be awaiting the 'Cats will affect the UK squad on Monday.  "We come from the SEC and we've played before sold out crowds, so in that area, we'll be fine."   

With the win, on Monday, UK will now look to advance to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2016.  The 'Cats have lost the last four times they have played in the second round.  Last year, Kansas State eliminated UK with an 80-79 overtime win at Historic Memorial Coliseum. 

Indeed, UK's fast start more than made up for their less than stellar finish and the 'Cats survived and advanced to play another day.