Kentucky-Vanderbilt Postgame Quotes – UK Athletics

KENTUCKY BASKETBALL POSTGAME QUOTES
16 KENTUCKY VS. No. 7 VANDERBILT
HISTORIC MEMORIAL COLISEUM – LEXINGTON, KY.
FEBRUARY 5, 2026
Kentucky Quotes
Head Coach Kenny Brooks
Opening Statement…
“Obviously very disappointed with the outcome. If you want to win a basketball game, that nature of playing against one of the best teams in the country, you have to minimize your mistakes and about us, we lost focus several possessions, had careless turnovers, careless miscommunications that could have been rectified if we had just communicated, but give I them credit. You got Mikayla Blakes who obviously is one of the best players, if not the best player in the country, and she put them on her back and she made some really big shots down the stretch to propel them to the win, but disappointed, I feel like it’s been a little frustrating period for us just because we felt like we were going in a direction and obviously Teonni got hurt and trying to put it back together, and trying to find ways to get that chemistry, but we’ll continue to fight.”
On the situational awareness of when to foul… 
“We weren’t supposed to foul in that situation, and I don’t know why we did, chalk it up for experience, but we had plenty of time to get a possession. I think it was 43 seconds and we were going to play the possession out and whatever reason she fouled, and she played hard, she made some shots for us. I just made a mistake in there and those are some of the things that we talk about that we have to clean up because we wanted to play that possession out and it’s just unfortunate, but we still had an opportunity to tie the basketball game, but that’ll be a learning experience for us.”
On Blakes being a special player… 
“She’s a special player. She’s seen everything, every coverage and she knows how to handle them. She has a unique ability to slide around you and finish, unorthodox leg up, so she’s hard to guard. I thought there was a stretch where we switched out on her and we had our post players switching out on her, which we wanted, but they didn’t corral her, they allowed her to get downhill I think once or twice and then she stopped behind the screen and to give her credit, she made the shots, so we knew, we talked about it as a coaching staff. Shea runs some of the best stuff in the league, but we know when it gets down to crunch, they’re giving her the ball and getting out of play and we had some miscommunications. We really did. We probably had about five that I can remember where we needed to do something different and we allowed her to get going and then you’d probably add in the outlet passes that led to a couple of threes that they got. Those are things that will haunt us for a long time that we need to clean up.”
#7, Teonni Key
On Teonni coming back from injury…
“It’s good to be back, but at the end of the day, we didn’t play like we wanted, and that’s what I care about the most.”
On having the crowd behind you…
“Big blue nation is one of the best fan bases in the country, so we’re grateful for them bringing the energy for today’s game.”
 
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