'We're at a very vulnerable stage in women's basketball.' Kenny Brooks speaks on the difficulties of navigating the transfer portal

The transfer portal and the current landscape of college sports are practically the Wild West. The worse part? The way it is today could be completely different tomorrow with the ongoing House v. NCAA settlement hearing. It’s tough landscape for Kenny Brooks to navigate.

Brooks recently did an interview with SiriusXM, and among the many topics he hit on was the transfer portal.

“It’s hard. It’s really hard,” Brooks said of the transfer portal’s impact on women’s college basketball. “Not only is it hard for the players — there’s a misconception about the portal. It’s just like, ‘Okay, I jump in there and magically I get the perfect situation’. It can go a lot of different ways. It’s hard for coaches because you’re managing rosters like you’ve never done before. But it’s also hard for the fans, especially in women’s basketball, where they grew up watching kids come in as freshmen, go to sophomores and in their senior season, you feel like you know them.”

However, the portal has made it to where players spending four years at a school isn’t commonplace like it used to be. Now, there’s a lot of movement. Sometimes that movement is player-driven. Sometimes, it’s more coach-driven. It isn’t always totally mutual.

“So, it’s relationship-based now, “Brooks added, “It’s 2025 and it’s changing. We’ve given everyone the opportunity — freedom of movement, which, kids can come in and say, ‘Hey, I want to go somewhere else’. Coaches can say the same thing, and it’s really hard.”

“We’re at a very vulnerable stage in women’s basketball, just because we’re trying to figure it all out,” Brooks said. You have NIL, which is turning into revenue sharing. Now, you go into the roster management with the portal. So, it’s just an unease. Unsettling time right now, a little bit, but exciting at the same time. There is proof that it can be done.”

As far as finding that proof, just look at what Kentucky did this past season. 11 of the 13 players on the roster weren’t in Lexington the year before. Yet, the Cats went 23-8 and finished fourth in the SEC.

“You look at what we did last year, and a lot of people will look to that as a sign of progress — a sign that you can do it. We went into Kentucky last year with 11 new players, and they all had to learn each other, and we were very fortunate. We went into the portal not trying to get the best players, we wanted to get the right players.”

“They came together in a way that I could not have imagined,” Brooks noted. “The year was so successful, so fun watching them develop. We’re almost like the poster child for that. Some people say you can turn it around very quickly — it’s not that easy. We were very fortunate. We got the right kids, but it’s just the evolution of the game and where it is with the portal and the [revenue] share and NIL.”

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