Cats Hope Stacking Great Days, Having Home Court Will Pay Off on Friday
The Kentucky women’s basketball team will begin play in the 2025 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament on Friday against Liberty inside Historic Memorial Coliseum. For the Cats, there’s no other place they would rather be.
UK head coach Kenny Brooks and All-American point guard Georgia Amoore have seen, first-hand, how home court advantage can provide an advantage in the NCAA Tournament.
“It’s extremely important,” Brooks said. “I’ve gone through steps in the NCAA Tournament. I remember when I was at James Madison, I didn’t even know what the seed meant. I was just happy we were in. And then the more we got in, you start to say, okay, well, if we’re a better seed, we get a better matchup. And when we got to Virginia Tech, again, a little bit is very happy to be in, then we had a couple tough games, we want to improve our seed. Then we got to the point where we were hosting. And then it was like, oh, this is an advantage. And you’re able to feed off of your home crowd. You’re able to have some familiarity with the surroundings more so than your opponent. And you play better.”
Amoore agreed with her head coach.
“It’s a game changer,” Amoore said. “Obviously, everyone would like to host to kind of bring that community aspect here, and obviously the men’s side is hosting, but to have your hometown team hosting on that court, it’s a great push in a good direction. But for us, it just gives us that comfort, that feel, the crowd will be on our side.”
Kentucky has actually lost its last two games. The Cats fell at South Carolina in the regular season finale before dropping a close game against Oklahoma in the Southeastern Conference Tournament. Amoore knows that, this time of year, every team is capable of winning on a particular day.
“Going forward, every single team is good,” Amoore said. “Coach Brooks said it yesterday, a good day can send you home. We have to have great days. We have to stack great days. So, we’re present with that, and we’ve had a really, really good couple weeks of practice. And I think we all got our confidence back and worked on some new things.”
Brooks’ message to the team has been exactly that.
“Leading up to today, we’ve tried to just have a great practice. Don’t worry about anything else. Just have a great practice today,” Brooks said. “And I told them at this point, you can’t be good because good can get you sent home. You have to be great every day. Practice. Media session. You’ve got to be great in everything that you do at this point so that you can advance. And I think that’s something that we’ve learned from our experiences in the past.”
The Cats are hoping that the combination of having home court advantage in addition to stacking great days will be a winning one on Friday against Liberty.
