Will Kentucky WBB play in high-profile exhibitions in the future? 'Absolutely.'

We just watched Mark Pope‘s Kentucky team take down No. 1 Purdue in one of the most high-profile exhibition games in the country — if not the most-high profile exhibition game in the country. For as much as you could say about it not counting for or against the resume come March, there is still tons of value in doing that exhibition.

Firstly, it serves as a great litmus test for your program heading into the season — it doesn’t get tougher than playing No. 1. Then, it also allows fans to come out and watch your team play, which for a fan base like Big Blue Nation, that really just gets the blood pumping. We were all ready to hang that ninth banner after that win, right?

While the women’s team hasn’t done an open exhibition like that yet under Kenny Brooks, he understands that value in doing those types of exhibitions moving forward.

In his pre-Morehead State press conference on Tuesday, Brooks was asked if his team would partake in some of those high-profile, Purdue-like exhibitions moving forward.

“Absolutely,” Brooks said, leaving no doubt in his answer. “I think it’s trending toward that. I think this is the first year where you really see an abundance of exhibitions like that. We had an opportunity to look into a situation, it just fell through — it was late, but it is something that we look forward to doing. There’s just a lot of opportunities for teams to play that it’s got so many advantages — it’s a financial situation sometimes for some people in some areas.”

And when Kenny Brooks says that Kentucky will play in those types of exhibitions, he doesn’t mean bringing in Poop State.

“It’s really good competition with the lights on,” Brooks added. “You see a lot of teams playing exhibitions maybe against a Division II and they win by 100. I don’t know how much you get out of that, but I’m sure Coach Pope got a lot out of last week. I’m sure Coach [Matt] Painter did too. When you can play someone of that magnitude — and it really doesn’t count so you can kind of like work rotations or whatever — but when you beat the No. 1 team, it should count, you want it to count — but it will give you a great barometer of where you are.”

It’s also important to be able to get out and play in front of the fans simply because of the fact that even if you try your hardest, you just can’t replicate a game atmosphere.

Brooks continued, “This time of the year every year, you just don’t know where you are. We had a closed scrimmage last week, it helped us, but the lights weren’t on. We didn’t go through the pregame routine we normally do to get situated for the season.”

Point being, expect Kentucky to have some sort of big exhibition game around this time next year.

“So, I think you will probably see us do something like that next year. We’ll get to work on it a lot sooner than we did this past year.”

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