Texas at Kentucky women's basketball: How to watch, storylines for top-10 SEC clash
Texas just humbled the defending champs and now has a chance to win the SEC and earn a No. 1 seed in March. Up next: surging Kentucky, fresh off its highest AP poll ranking in nine seasons. The Wildcats are 1.5 games behind the Longhorns (as well as LSU and South Carolina) for the conference lead. Thursday is set up to be meaningful and intense.
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These programs only have two prior meetings, and both were at neutral sites. Conference realignment makes this a year of firsts for Texas. The W over South Carolina was a swaggering introduction to the rest of the league. They won at Moody without making a single 3-pointer, winning on the boards and creating turnovers. They'll go for a nine-game winning streak in Lexington.
Sophomore Madison Booker and sixth-year Taylor Jones have earned recent SEC Player of the Week honors. They make for a skilled and sturdy frontcourt. As evidenced by their game plan against the Gamecocks, these Longhorns don't care much about getting the long ball off. In stark contrast stand Kenny Brooks and Kentucky (Kenn-tucky Brooks?). Against conference opponents, the Cats are first in the Southeast in made 3s at a clean 38 percent clip. Australian senior Georgia Amoore, another recent conference player of the week, is taking more than seven per game.
Sophomore center Clara Strack is hosting a block party, and everyone is invited. Her average of 2.6 swats is the best in the conference and eighth in the NCAA. She had a program-best eight blocks against Ole Miss while flashing her range in the pick-and-pop:
Clara Straaaaaack. 😍
5-7 blocks.
7 points.
2 quarters left. pic.twitter.com/PgpyMYyz3k
— Kentucky Women's Basketball (@KentuckyWBB) February 11, 2025
The Athletic's Sabreena Merchant from this week's power rankings: 'Aaliyah Moore has been out for the last five games, and I've been interested to see how the Longhorns would fill in the gap of their fifth starter, even though Moore hasn't been nearly as productive as she was as a junior. Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda has taken her spot in the starting lineup, a logical replacement since this is her third year in Vic Schaefer's system, and she's a good defender and offensive rebounder. The normal Texas starting five had a plus-41.6 net rating before Sunday, per CBB Analytics, and the Mwenentanda unit was plus-26.1, a reasonable drop-off since most of those minutes have come in conference play.
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'The wild card making a case to take Mwenentanda's minutes is Jordan Lee, a freshman who played the entire fourth quarter in the Longhorns' upset of South Carolina. Lee brings much of the same defensive acumen as Mwenentanda — check out the way she covered Tessa Johnson in the final minute of Texas' win — but adds an important element for Texas: She shoots 3s.'
(Photo of Madison Booker: Adam Davis / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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