LEXINGTON, Ky. -- Kenny Brooks was too busy to celebrate his birthday.
It was five days before Christmas, and a good mid-major team was in town seeking a signature victory. And the coach was consumed with leading his Kentucky women's basketball team past a potential trap game.
The Wildcats didn't let that happen. After Kentucky had beaten Belmont 84-78, Brooks finally took a moment to exhale. The birthday vibes? Still on hold.
"I think the cake can wait until tomorrow," he said with a laugh inside his office at Memorial Coliseum.
Since late March, when Brooks announced he was leaving Virginia Tech after eight seasons, the pace hasn't slowed. After a lifetime of playing and coaching in his home state of Virginia, including 14 years at his alma mater, James Madison, Brooks' move to Kentucky was one of the biggest of the offseason in women's college basketball. It was made more so when former Hokies star Georgia Amoore, one of the country's top point guards, transferred to Kentucky in April.
"I wasn't looking to leave," Brooks told ESPN. "But I listened [to Kentucky]. And the more I listened, I felt like this is something that can be sustainable."
The Brooks era is off to a strong start in Big Blue Nation. The No. 12 Wildcats are 17-2 and tied for second in the SEC at 6-1. Their only losses are on the road: at then-No. 16 North Carolina on Dec. 5 and at Texas A&M on Jan. 23.
But Kentucky's schedule the rest of the regular season is challenging: Six of its remaining nine games are against ranked opponents, starting Thursday with No. 22 Alabama in Lexington. The Wildcats also will face No. 2 South Carolina, No. 5 Texas, No. 7 LSU, No. 13 Oklahoma and No. 18 Tennessee. Along with Ole Miss, which was ranked earlier this season.
"I look at it as like it's quintessential SEC -- what a way to go out in my last year of college," Amoore said. "It's like the perfect way to gain some momentum: to play some really tough teams back-to-back-to-back before the postseason."
The Wildcats are a projected No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament. Amoore leads them in scoring (18.3 PPG) and the SEC in assists (7.4) and minutes per game (35.7).
Brooks and Amoore, a graduate student, clicked immediately in the recruiting process and helped lead Virginia Tech to its first Final Four in 2023. She said no one knows her game better than him, and he said he can challenge her hard in practice and workouts and she won't ever back away.
"It was never, 'Hey, you've got to go with me,'" Brooks said of Amoore coming to Kentucky. "I was leaving it up to her because she still had another decision to make: Whether she was going to put her name in the WNBA draft.
"Now, it's one more year of working together and the excitement of going somewhere and doing it all over again. Creating something just like what we created at Virginia Tech."
Another former Hokie who transferred to Kentucky, 6-foot-5 sophomore center Clara Strack, leads the SEC in blocked shots (2.4 per game). Amoore and Strack are among five Wildcat starters who average double figures in scoring, along with two other transfers, forward Teonni Key (North Carolina) and guard Dazia Lawrence (Charlotte), plus freshman forward Amelia Hassett, who like Amoore is Australian.
Teonni Key discusses the Wildcats' team chemistry and how it impacts their rhythm on the court as she details her double-double performance against the Razorbacks.
Amoore came from Down Under to play for Brooks at Virginia Tech amid the global pandemic in 2020. She never expected to be here four years later, in a different league, trying to do for Kentucky what she helped do for Virginia Tech: make a breakthrough to the Final Four.
"This is Year 1 for us here, and I'll be gone next year. Now, I'm helping develop the team chemistry," said Amoore, who bypassed the 2024 WNBA draft and opted for a fifth year of college eligibility via the COVID-19 waiver from the 2020-21 season.
"When I committed at Tech, I had no idea we would do what we did there. I just trusted the process. [Brooks] can do it here, too. In this landscape now, with the playing field kind of opening up with NIL, you can get there. It just takes the right team at the right time to get hot."
The Hokies did it in 2023, led by Amoore and center Elizabeth Kitley. They won the ACC tournament title for the first time in program history, then advanced to the national semifinals where they fell to eventual champion LSU, finishing 31-5.
Last season, the Hokies won the ACC regular-season title but Kitley suffered a season-ending ACL injury on March 3 and couldn't play in the postseason. Brooks felt so bad for Kitley, calling it one of his toughest times as a coach. And then later in March, his time with the Hokies ended.
As is often the case when a popular and successful coach leaves a program, there were hard feelings among some Hokies fans, especially since players such as Amoore and Strack left with him. Brooks also was dealing with family issues: his wife, Chrissy, had been diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023. But he said Chrissy and their four children supported the move.
Brooks, 56, thought Kentucky was the right place to take the final step in his career, and said his family understood that.
"I always thought it was a sleeping giant," he said. "You've got a great facility. You're moving into a new era of college athletics in general. I think they're going to put us in the forefront."
Kentucky has reached 12 of the past 18 NCAA tournaments, getting as far as the Elite Eight three times (2010, 2012, 2013). Contrast that to the first 24 years of the NCAA tournament, when Kentucky made the field just five times.
The Wildcats' greatest period of success was under coach Matthew Mitchell from 2007-20. Mitchell stepped down due to health and family reasons in November 2020, and assistant Kyra Elzy took over the program. Her biggest victory came in the SEC tournament final over eventual national champion South Carolina in 2022, just the second time Kentucky won the league tournament.
But after going a combined 24-39 overall and 6-26 in the SEC the past two seasons, Elzy was let go and Brooks came aboard.
It hasn't been an easy season for some coaches in new positions. Kate Paye (Stanford) and Jan Jensen (Iowa) were longtime assistants who took over when their predecessors, Tara VanDerveer and Lisa Bluder, retired. Stanford is 10-9 overall and 2-6 in its first season in the ACC. Iowa, having lost Caitlin Clark, is 14-7 and 4-6 in the Big Ten.
Another head coach new to the SEC like Brooks is Tennessee's Kim Caldwell, whose Lady Vols are 15-5 and 3-5. Brooks' replacement at Virginia Tech, Megan Duffy, is 14-6 and 5-4 in the ACC.
For Brooks and the Wildcats, so far, so good. But they understand their toughest games are ahead.
Brooks said playing the best teams later in the SEC season has given Kentucky a chance to get more comfortable together in his first year there.
"It's probably a really good thing for us the way that it was laid out," he said of the SEC schedule. "Or course, maybe I won't say that when I'm going through that gauntlet.
"The year we went to the Final Four at Virginia Tech, we had a tough schedule in the ACC, too. I kept reminding our kids, 'We're a ranked team, too.' That's what we'll say here. You've just got to go out and have that confidence."