GREENVILLE, S.C. — Day 2 of the SEC Tournament began much the same way as Day 1: Kentucky put in another major win over a new opponent, seemingly putting to bed head coach Kenny Brooks’ worries about his team playing back-to-backs.
The first game of the day also saw a redemption tour of sorts for the Wildcats’ Clara Strack, who hit five threes and even inspired Brooks to note that she may one day become the best superstar he’s ever coached.
Then, Oklahoma soared past Florida after Kentucky sent Georgia home, and Mississippi dominated Auburn during the third game of the day.
Kentucky blitzed past Georgia on back-to-backs
Despite coach Kenny Brooks’ worries about how playing intense back-to-backs might impact his team, the Kentucky Wildcats began their second day match against the Georgia Bulldogs with a lot of energy and never lost it. The torrential match offered a stark contrast to the one the Wildcats played the day before, and much of what makes the SEC the toughest league was on full display.
There were plenty of fouls throughout the game and outraged fans on both sides, but the biggest story emerged was that of Clara Strack, who had 33 points — and five threes.
Strack, who was on the receiving end of criticism from Brooks following her disappointing performance during the team’s road win against Auburn on Feb. 26, said her coach told her all season she’d hit four or five three-pointers at some point this season. Fortunately for the Wildcats, Thursday was that day.
Of that criticism (Brooks told her she was the “worst superstar” he’s ever coached), Strack said after the game, “I think I needed it. I always need something like that to get me going … it’s a long season. You’ll have lows, but I think you have to remember [to] take it game by game. He was just trying to get me ready for the next game.”
Preparing for today, tomorrow’s, and next week’s games are all part of what’s running thorugh Brooks’ mind at any given moment during the game his team is actually playing, he told reporters. “Every coach you’ve talked to that’s advanced in the tournament, at some point in the game, you coach the game differently,” he explained.
Brooks, who notably was seated in a chair with his head in his hands as his entire bench celebrated a big shot with 2:35 left in the game, added, “You don’t just coach for the moment … you’re doing things because you know you have to play. You may have to play tomorrow, and you’re constantly thinking … about today, but I’m also thinking about tomorrow.”
“This is the toughest league in the country, and we’re gonna fight tooth and nail every time we get out there,” Brooks added. “But we’re also trying to make ourselves great for the NCAA tournament.”
Before the Wildcats can get there, they have to focus on the here: the team will play the South Carolina Gamecocks at noon EST Thursday.
Oklahoma shut down Florida after runaway second half
The first half of the Sooners’ meeting with the Florida Gators was tough and tight. Both teams appeared to adjust in real time to the SEC’s largest stage. Florida, who has the youngest roster in the league, held the score close as Raegan Beers, Sahara Williams and Zya Vann ran into foul trouble and failed to produce the numbers Oklahoma needed.
But whatever Coach Jennie Baranczyk said during halftime worked, because the Sooners came out of the locker room a refreshed and renewed team. The favorites outscored the Gators 27-7 during the third quarter and never faltered for the rest of the match.
Beers ended the game passing two milestones: she scored her 2,000th career point and notcher her 1,000th rebound, and is currently the only active Division I player to have both stats under her belt. Beers acknowledged this after the game, and told reporters that no matter what it looks like, those stats are team efforts.
“It’s really, really cool,” she said. “It’s sometimes seen as an individual achievement … but I’m a post, so I’m going to tell you, I don’t make a lot of my own shots. So all my shots come from great passes from my guards. So while that is an individual achievement, I also see that as a team achievement.”
Beers’ answer is representative of who she is and what Oklahoma basketball is all about, Barancyzk told reporters. “Honestly, I’m up here smiling because they [Beers and Aaliyah Chavez] just answer both questions so authentically,” she said. “Sometimes you don’t see that with Reagan, because you see her as this fierce player that’s on the floor, and she’s posting up, and she’s strong. And you don’t always get to see her her heart’s a pretty amazing heart.”
Beers is “almost to a fault, team-first,” Barancyzk continued, “but that’s Oklahoma, and that’s what we want to be able to do.”
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Though they didn’t get the result they hoped for, Florida’s Coach Kelly Rae Finley had glowing things to say about her team. “As a woman who leads young women, I think it’s really important that we acknowledge that we’re all compeititors, but there is a human component to everything that we do,” she said of the Gators’ 2025-26 season and SEC performance. “And the human component shines with pride when you’re mentoring, coaching, challenging and uplifting 18 to 23-year-old young adults.”
“And so what I can tell you about this team is, man, they prepare like the best of them,” she added. “We’re the youngest team in the conference, and we showed up every single night to compete, and I would expect nothing else.”
And while there’s plenty to focus on during the postseason, including a potential March Madness run, Florida will continue to “develop our players,” she added. “We pour into them, we lead them, and when you love them, we challege them. We show up for them every day, and analytically, they just improve.”
Mississippi started the season over with a big win over Auburn
The Auburn Tigers fell to Mississippi 73-57, which put an end to Coach Vickers’ first SEC tournament experience with a team that’s very much still learning the conference ropes.
Vickers told reporters after the game that the tournament experience was eye-opening in terms of what steps the Tigers need to take ahead of the 2026-27 season. “Our concern, number one, is to try to get deeper going into the next year,” he said. “You have to get a lot bigger … we lost by 17 on the glass today. Last time we played Ole Miss, we lost by 28.”
Ultimately, the Tigers will need to “get bigger and we have to get deeper,” Vickers added. “I mean, we’ve got to become a better rebounding basketball team. It’s definitely my priority moving into the portal.”
While Mississippi “wasn’t a great matcup for us,” there were highlights for the team. Sophomore Khady Leye, who transferred to Auburn from Towson, finished the tournament with a combined 28 points and 23 rebounds over two games.
“Obviously, this is a tough league … I know this league is really compeititive,” Leye told reporters. “I’m really glad that I’m on this team, and I love playing for him.”
Mississippi’s triumphant win makes the team 1-0, Coach Yolett McPhee-McCuin explained after the game. “I’m on today,” she said. “Today we won, and we went 1-0.”
This season will mark the team’s fifth NCAA Tournament appearance in a row, something she’s justifiably proud of. The team’s conference debut “wasn’t about how much we beat them by — it was about us being aggressive, and having a mentality, and setting a tone for my players.”
“At the end of the day, we want to just go 1-0,” McPhee-McCuin added.
Mississippi will next play the Vanderbilt Commodores, who earned a double bye ahead of the tournament. The two teams last met in January, when Mississippi beat Vanderbilt 83-75. Still, McPhee-McCuin said that win doesn’t necessarily predict anything about things to come.
The team’s success will lie in being themselves. “This whole time we’e been going through our games, our team has just been developing confidence and learning about themselves,” she said. “And I think that’s how you beat a team like Vanderbilt.”
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Alabama’s team basketball sent Tennessee home
After an initially compeitive first quarter that saw the two teams tied, the Alabama Crimson Tide led the Lady Vols for the rest of the night.
Alabama’s effort was led by “really good team basketball,” coach Kristy Curry told reporters after the game. The team also understood that the key to undoing Tennessee was to “expose them during the press,” Ta’Mia Scott told reporters after the game. Navigating around and through Tennessee’s full court press involved “just moving the ball and making sure that we had our head on a swivel and just if somebody got in trouble, we helped them,” she also added.
The team also came into the game with a mentality that’s tough to beat. “It was a huge win for us. We’re trying to make history. We’re trying to get all the way to the SEC championship. We know the SEC is a gauntlet. Each day it’s a fight. That kind of shows when we’re playing our regular season games,” Jessica Timmons said.
She added of the Tide’s next game against Texas, “We’re going to go into our next game the same way. We’re going to come in there competitive and just understand that any game is winnable in the SEC.”
Though Alabama struggled at various points this season, Curry explained, the team “never lost our confidence, and we kept it in perspective that we can turn that into a positive at some moment.”
Unfortunately for Tennessee, Coach Kim Caldwell said after the game, that’s not the case for the Lady Vols. The team was “outworked, outplayed and outcoached from the very start,” and never managed to overcome those deficits.
Still, she doesn’t think the team should be ruled out of the NCAA Tournament this month. “I think we’ve played the hardest schedule in the country,” Caldwell said. “I think the majority of that came in February, but we have significant wins, and I think that we hope to get in and continue to try to be a different team.”