Two days after fourth-seeded Virginia Tech was upset within the second spherical of the ladies’s NCAA match, the Hokies’ Kenny Brooks has stepped all the way down to take over as head coach of the Kentucky Wildcats.
Brooks, a Virginia native, leaves Blacksburg after eight seasons. He guided Virginia Tech to its first Closing 4 look in 2023 and compiled a 180-82 document since taking on in 2017. In Lexington, Brooks replaces Kyra Elzy, who was let go this month after consecutive shedding seasons.
In 22 seasons as a Division I head coach, Brook sports activities a .717 profession profitable proportion. He has had only one shedding document, in 2003-04, his second season at James Madison, the place he coached for 14 years previous to becoming a member of Virginia Tech. Brooks was 8-4 in opposition to SEC groups with the Hokies.
Virginia Tech led the ACC in offensive effectivity and efficient subject aim proportion in 2023-24, whereas Kentucky was final in each classes this previous season, in keeping with ESPN Stats & Info.
How will Brooks match into the SEC? What’s Virginia Tech’s path ahead? We have a look.
What does Brooks convey to Kentucky
Kentucky reached its biggest interval of success in ladies’s basketball with three journeys to the Elite Eight in a four-season span from 2010 to 2013 below coach Matthew Mitchell. After he retired for well being and household causes simply earlier than the 2020-21 season, Elzy was elevated from her assistant position to go coach and guided the Wildcats to simply this system’s second SEC match title in 2022.
Kentucky has had actual success, but additionally some down years. For a very long time, it was tough to be the “different” basketball program in Large Blue Nation. Not a lot completely different from the scenario for ladies’s hoops groups at locations corresponding to Kansas, Duke and North Carolina, the place the highlight on legendary males’s applications could be all-consuming.
That has modified steadily through the years, to the purpose the place that highlight can broaden for different sports activities at these colleges. We all know how a lot love for basketball there’s at Kentucky, and Brooks can faucet into that.
Going into the SEC has its pluses and its drawbacks. From a convention stability standpoint, the SEC is rock-solid. There may be a number of visibility for SEC applications. However the league has been dominated by one program — South Carolina — for the previous decade, and Gamecocks coach Daybreak Staley reveals no indicators of slowing down.
Plus, LSU is the defending nationwide champion, and perennial NCAA match applications corresponding to Texas and Oklahoma are becoming a member of the SEC. The convention, even in so-called down seasons, is stacked.
This needed to be a tough transfer for Brooks, a Virginia native who so far had spent his total teaching profession there. Now, he strikes from one commonwealth to a different, from a league the place his Hokies gained a regular-season title this yr to 1 the place doing that might be about as robust as profitable a nationwide championship. However his success at James Madison and Virginia Tech are good indications that he’s as much as the problem. — Michael Voepel
What does Brooks’ departure imply for Virginia Tech?
The 2024-25 marketing campaign was already going to be certainly one of transition for the Hokies after three-time ACC Participant of the Yr Elizabeth Kitley completed her school profession. And there was no assure all-American Georgia Amoore, who’s a senior, would keep a fifth yr. However with Brooks now departing, and presumably taking members of this system with him, Blacksburg faces a tall activity forward in holding the Hokies on the degree they achieved below Brooks.
It took time for Brooks, who arrived forward of the 2016-17 season, to show Virginia Tech into an ACC and nationwide contender, and to construct a fan base that grew to become one of many nation’s most electrical. Athletic director Whit Babcock should discover a chief who can preserve a robust sense of tradition inside the program and preserve it from slipping again into its days of irrelevance (the Hokies achieved their first profitable document in ACC play below Brooks and went 15 years with out a NCAA match look earlier than first making it below him in 2021).
Shawn Poppie, who labored below Brooks for years at Virginia Tech, would have made a number of sense as Brooks’ successor, however as of Tuesday morning reportedly was taking the pinnacle teaching job at Clemson. It’s going to be fascinating to see what types of candidates Blacksburg can appeal to on this school sports activities panorama and with uncertainty escalating inside the ACC. — Alexa Philippou