44 Days till Kentucky WBB Season: That Time No. 44 Shocked the World

With 44 days until the Kentucky women’s basketball season, let’s hit the rewind button and take a look at why that number — 44 — is so significant when talking about the history of the program.

People to think about the Kyra Elzy era in a negative light because of how poorly the team performed toward the end of her tenure, but there’s a legitimate argument to be made that she accomplished a feat that puts her right up there with Matthew Mitchell in terms of the UK all-time coaching greats: leading Kentucky to the 2022 SEC Tournament Championship.

The 2021-22 season was an emotional roller coaster for the program. Heading into conference tournament play, the Cats weren’t projected to make the NCAA Tournament, sitting at 15-11 (8-8 SEC).

However, Kentucky was riding a six-game winning streak heading into that year’s SEC Tournament, with their last loss being a one-point, 60-59 defeat at the hands of No. 1 South Carolina. The Gamecocks were clearly the best team in the country that year.

So, even after Kentucky made an incredible run all the way to Sunday’s SEC Tournament title game, it still felt like it would take a miracle to take down Dawn Staley’s star-studded squad. The thing is, though, they got that miracle.

Down by one with the final seconds of the fourth quarter ticking away, No. 44, Dre’Una Edwards, hit the go-ahead three to put Kentucky up 64-62 with 4.2 seconds remaining. With no timeouts left, South Carolina was forced to send up a prayer, and it was no good.

For the first time since 1982, the Cats were SEC champs.

Of course, Edwards would eventually skip out of town and head to Baylor to round out her collegiate career, and following the 2023-24 season, Kyra Elzy was let go. Now, she’s serving as an assistant under Kara Lawson at Duke.

The Kentucky women’s basketball program has changed a lot since then — and for the better, thanks to Kenny Brooks — but man, it may be a minute before we get a day as special as that one was.

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