Kentucky-Oklahoma Postgame Quotes
KENTUCKY BASKETBALL POSTGAME QUOTES
- 6 KENTUCKY VS. NO. 5 OKLAHOMA
HISTORIC MEMORIAL COLISEUM – LEXINGTON, KY.
JANUARY 11, 2026
Kentucky Quotes
Head Coach Kenny Brooks
Opening Statement…
“First and foremost, I don’t if I’ve ever been more proud of a group of young people. The way they came out and obviously with the circumstances, and still having remnants of Teonni’s absence, trying to reinvent ourselves into what we’re going to be in a very short amount of time while you’re playing top match opponents So, I can’t be more proud of a group the way they came out. Obviously, the first couple minutes didn’t go our way. We didn’t execute and then it took us a couple minutes to really catch speed. Oklahoma does a tremendous job; they are the fastest team in the country. They get the ball up and down the floor, they have the most possessions, and it took us a little while to figure out that they were going to be that aggressive. And then once we settled in, then it became a very physical basketball game, and the way our kids were resilient throughout the whole basketball game. So very excited and they had tremendous performances. I thought Tonie was great all night, Clara was tremendous, and Jordan was really big. We put the assignment of her guarding Beers so that Clara could kind of stay free and do some stuff on the offensive end and Jordan came up with huge rebounds down the stretch to give us extra possessions. So, total team effort, very proud of them. I think they start class tomorrow, they’ll have some rest for the next couple days and then we’ll get ready for Florida.”
On Coach’s message for adversity during the games and getting through it…
“Just stay the course. Jordan missed, I don’t know, three, four, 19 lay ups? And then, she has a play, and I’ll probably remember this for the rest of my life, she made a play right before half, and clearly the ball was going out on them, and we would have gotten the last possession, and she hustled and tried to save it and my body language, was bad, because I was disappointed. When she looked at me, I was like, man, you can’t fault a kid for their, effort. I think before I even went and talked to the coaches, I went in and talked to her and I said, “I’ll never fault you for your effort we just have to play smarter.” And she was huge for us, but I thought that during that stretch when we couldn’t make a shot and then when we made those threes, as bad as we played, you look up we’re only down four. So, I thought our defense was tremendous in the second half. We held them to 23 points and to hold a high powered offense like that to 23 points is really good and I was very proud them.”
#13, Clara Strack
On overcoming the physicality of the game…
“I think going in with the mindset to be ready for a battle every night, and then knowing we have to give it back. We can’t just take it over and over again, we have to give it back and still use our strengths to our advantage.”
On the importance of bouncing back after Alabama game…
“Staying true to ourselves, and knowing what we need to do, and knowing that wasn’t how we play, or how we want to play. Just going back to what we do every day, relying on the things we do in practice, and not making any drastic changes because we lost one game.”
