MONDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2020
JOE CRAFT CENTER – LEXINGTON, KY.
Head Coach Kyra Elzy
Opening statement…
“Thank you, Mr. (Mitch) Barnhart. I really appreciate the opportunity to be the new head coach at the University of Kentucky. It still has not sunk in, but I will get there. I am extremely appreciative to you, Mr. Barnhart, President (Eli) Capilouto, the UK administration, and all of the UK personnel, just for the encouragement and the support that I have received thus far. I want to give a big shoutout to our staff, Niya Butts, Amber Smith, Lin Dunn, Daniel Boice, and all of our support staff. You all are amazing, and it is the people that make Kentucky special. Our job as a staff is to make sure that our players have the best college experience possible, so our motto, we will inspire, impact and influence, to make sure that our players are ready for life after Kentucky. This is a big responsibility, I am ready for the moment. Thank you to Coach (Matthew) Mitchell for inspiring me and giving me the confidence and wings to soar. We hope to make you proud. This year is for you, coach. Our staff and players will continue to live by the core values of Kentucky women’s basketball, which are family, hard work, discipline, accountability and servant leaderships. We will put a team on the floor that you are proud of, so Big Blue Nation, I’ve said it before, but I will give you my all, along with this staff.”
On if you expected to be named head coach so soon…
“No, I didn’t expect it. Mr. Barnhart and I met when the initial news happened, and you know, he named me the interim head coach, and at that time, the staff and I knew we had a responsibility to make sure that we were guiding and leading the players, we were going to put our head down and grind and give them the best of us so we could have some success this season. The mentality doesn’t change. We have a job to do. We are going to lead, guide, prepare for basketball games, and make sure that our players are taking care of their academic achievements on and off the court, so that is where we are and the mentality has not changed.”
On what the message was to recruits during the interim period and how that message will change moving forward…
“Well, the thing about recruiting is we have great relationships with our AAU coaches, our high school coaches, and that is because of our staff. Amber Smith leads us out in recruiting, Coach (Niya) Butts does an amazing job of connecting, so our message remains the same. They believe in what we are doing at Kentucky, our style of play, our discipline, our family atmosphere and stability with the coaching staff, so they have been very excited about the possibilities at Kentucky, and now that I am the head coach, it does make it easier to get Wildcats here, so we are excited and we will continue to work hard to build relationships to win them over.”
On being named head coach as a black woman…
“You know, there is a lot going on right now with the social injustice, with COVID. We are all dealing with a lot as basketball coaches and players across the country. The thing about it is you have to be resilient. We talk to our players about being resilient, we have to be tough, we have to be flexible, we have to be willing to adjust, because every day brings something different. So, our kids have been resilient during this time with all of the changes that have been made, and they remain focused. And, as far as the sisterhood, I am honored to join the other sisters in this business. There are a lot of people that have laid the foundation, that have opened the doors for me to have this opportunity, if you go back to Coach (Vivian) Stringer, Coach (Bernadette) Locke-Mattox, Coach Dawn Staley and Coach Carolyn Peck, so there are a lot of people before me, and as my college coach would say, you always pay your blessings forward, so I hope this door opens, and now that it has, that I use this opportunity to impact other people and so that they could see hope.”
On being a black female head coach of a forward-facing program at Kentucky…
“Well, I think this seat is not just a black woman or a woman. It is a big responsibility. I am very thankful for Mitch Barnhart, that he has the confidence in me to lead this program. I am surrounded by amazing people to help me get the job done. This moment is way bigger than me. There are a lot of people that have put in a lot of hard work and investment in Kentucky to make it the program it is today.”
On what you can attribute to your start this season…
“Well, thank you so much, and as far as being able to play the games, hats off to our medical staff, Jim Madaleno. He has been unbelievable during this time with the COVID protocols. Courtney Jones, who works specifically with women’s basketball, she keeps us in line and makes sure that we have the rules, that we are very informed on what it will take to keep us on the court, and our players and staff. We’ve had to make a big sacrifice in order to play, and that’s time away from friends, time away from family, not being able to do all of the things that we would like to do, but in order to play, those are the sacrifices that we have to make. As far as the games, it does take a little bit of luck as well, so we’ll keep that, but we are appreciative that we have had the opportunity to get six games in. We’ve learned a lot. We are a work in progress, we are not a finished product yet, but what I challenge the team every day is to get 1 percent better every day, whether that is in practice or if that is in games, in order to reach the goals that we are looking to achieve.”
On if you’ve told the team…
“Yes, that’s great news, we do not have to think about it for the rest of the season. Obviously, we still have a big job to do and have to stay focused and reach our goals on and off the court, but I was able to tell the team, and the emotion and excitement has me fired up, so they didn’t know exactly what I was doing, but we got finished with film and I called the staff up one-by-one and I was thanking them for their service, for their commitment to Kentucky, and I just happened to be looking at KeKe McKinney and she was looking at me like what is about to happen, so they were giving all of the coaches a round of applause and I said for the next couple of years, this will be your coaching staff, and they jumped up out of their chairs, and they were hugging each other, and they started hugging us, so today was a great day, and you know, it gives everybody the stability that we’re looking for, so we can put that behind us and focus on the goal at hand.”
On if there are things that you would like to do differently than Matthew Mitchell…
“Yeah, Coach (Matthew) Mitchell and I are very close. He is a brother, a friend, a mentor, and one of the reasons that I am sitting here today. He has built a great program, and I am blessed to inherit a great team with a lot of talented players. But, I feel like I have invested in that process along with Coach Amber Smith, along with Coach Niya Butts. You know, there will be some things that I do different, as far as making sure that there is great relationships with the players, communication, but I think we were so aligned in our approach, that that is what made our coaching duo so special and successful, so the formula is laid. It is a matter of continuing to build and putting my own twist on it. So, I don’t know exactly what all of those things will be right now, but I am sure I will figure it out as the season progresses.”
On going on the road to DePaul and seeing DeWayne Peevy…
“Of course I will have to seek DeWayne Peevy out. He is a Wildcat through and through, and a great friend, and we will be in a dog fight at DePaul. You know, we started our preparations today, but that’s why you play the game, you want to compete, you want to get better, and these are the games that will help us prepare for the conference, which is the toughest conference in the country.”
On if you are sharing notes with Jeff Walz, or any other coaches, in order to help you navigate this situation…
“Well like I said, it is an unprecedented time, and you do talk to your collogues and get advice and encouragement, or whatever the case may be, and as far as Coach (Jeff) Walz, no I have not reached out yet for advice, but I am sure that I will. He was my AAU coach, and we have a great relationship, and he has done a phenomenal job with that program, and I look forward to following up with the series when the time is right.”
Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart
Opening statement…
“A few weeks ago, I had the chance of introducing Kyra Elzy as our interim head women’s basketball coach. Circumstances at that point in time were that we were returning quick and that did not allow Kyra and I the opportunity to talk about her plans, her style of leadership of our program. Although I thought we would get there, I wanted to have a little bit more of a conversation for both of our benefit, just to make sure that there was alignment, and making sure that we had the University of Kentucky and the women’s basketball program in the right spot as we both thought about it together. Kyra has earned and deserved the opportunity to lead this program into the future. With that, I am going to keep it short and sweet, it is my pleasure and my honor to introduce, and takeaway the interim title, and make Kyra Elzy the head women’s basketball coach at the University of Kentucky. Congratulations to Kyra, to Dexter (Lander) and Jackson (Lander). We are extremely excited about looking into the future and watching you lead the Wildcats. So, with that, I’m going to turn it over to the new head coach.”
On why you didn’t give Kyra Elzy the head coach tag at the beginning…
“Yeah, I think the challenge is simply that I would never go through and just hand titles out without having the opportunity to sit down with someone and make sure. It’s not different than a coach walking into a home and recruiting, and they see film, and they say that person is really good on film, but they haven’t had a chance to assess what their thoughts are and what their plans are as they try to fit them into their program. I want to have that same opportunity to have a chance. I have always interviewed my head coaches and have had an opportunity to spend time with them. Kyra and I, although I have been around her for many years, I’ve never had the opportunity to spend time with her and just listen to her talk about how she wants to lead. I didn’t think it would take long. I wanted to make sure that we were in the right spot, and that she felt comfortable with my partnership that she is creating with me, and vice versa. We’ve got to work together in years to come, and those are conversations that you need to have before you make sure that you tie the knot, so to speak.”
On what you can release about the contract…
“It’s all done, and Kyra and I, and our staff members, finalized it all yesterday. The last signature is in the president’s office, so he’ll sign that and we will release it to you guys this afternoon.”
On the budgetary situation of the department via the pandemic and how you feel about that moving forward…
“We will address that with our athletics committee tonight at 5 p.m., so I am not giving you an initiation to tune in, but we’ll do that. I don’t want to get ahead of that group, but we will certainly address it at that time. And, let me go back to something Kyra said about what she is doing with her team. The grades from the first semester came out and I am extremely happy with our women’s basketball team again, I think it was a 3.2 if I am not mistaken, Kyra, they continue to do very well in the classroom and that is a point of emphasis. So, they continue to do really well on the court and we’re off to a fast start and I am proud of that, but I am equally proud of the effort that our women are placing on academics and the things that they are doing in the classroom, and that comes from the leadership of the staff, so thank you for that.”
On what you saw in Kyra Elzy that helped you make this decision and how you weighed that against the possible benefits of running a national search…
“Well, when you’ve got one of the best right at home, why would you leave home? I was very comfortable with what we had at home. Standing on the sidelines is a little different than the interview process. That took care of itself, but when we sat down, she had an incredibly well thought through and detailed plan of the things that she wanted to do in order to help our program continue to move forward. I think as any administrator would want to know, what is the plan? When she unveiled that, it became very clear to me that she had thought this through at a pretty high level. It was that kind of high level thinking that I felt like was going to be necessary to get us to a spot where we had a chance to talk about some of the dreams she aspires to reach – Final Fours, national championships – those kind of things that our kids dream of and that she is dreaming of. I’ve watched Kyra for years. I’ve known about her since the days that she played. She didn’t know me back then, but I watched her. Then, to have the opportunity to watch her on the sidelines and be Matthew’s assistant, to see her work ethic and the things that she did, it wasn’t a hard step, there were just some ribbons that need to be tied up to make sure that we had it in the right spot. She answered all of those questions just like I knew she would. So, I was very comfortable. Most of y’all know that I love working with assistant coaches and making them head coaches. We’ve done a bunch of that here. A bunch of our head coaches came here from assistant coach worlds and they have been very successful, as Matthew (Mitchell) was from Mickie DeMoss, and now Kyra is in that same lineage. So, she is doing that same kind of thing where she is on that same trajectory. I am excited about that. We have a bunch of them that are still here, and they’ve been here a long time. She and I were talking yesterday, we’ve had several folks that have come as assistant coaches and have been very successful – coaches of the year – and many of them are in our league. So, I anticipate the same kind of wonderful stories for Kyra.”
On your overall assessment of playing through COVID…
“If you think about the medical piece of it, as she (Kyra Elzy) sort of referenced that a little bit, I am not a medical expert. I have not been through a pandemic, and I am not sure anyone else on this call has. If you have, you are a more amazing person than I am, that I know, but I have not been through one. So, this is new territory for any of us. I will tell you, without the medical advice of Jim Madaleno and our crew, I don’t know how we would’ve made it through this. I don’t know how we would have been able to continue without his expertise and that medical taskforce, and I give Greg Sankey a ton of credit. He helped our athletic directors, the medical task forces and the presidents to find a pathway for our young people to compete in sports. We’ve heard it over and over, young people want to play. They want to play the game that they love, whether that is football, women’s basketball or swimming and diving, they all want to compete, that’s what they do. So, we’ve been in constant conversation with coaching staff, as well as those entities, and we’re not changing the rules to fit a narrative, we’re not doing that. What we will do is stay with the protocol, live with the protocol, live with the challenges that are in front of us and address them. The numbers got thin in football a couple of times and we were still able to play, and I admire and will always appreciate the effort that our folks gave. We can talk about and assess the season later on after we complete it, and work our way through that, but I will tell you, our young people are in one of the safest places that they can be. There is no other place where they would receive better care, they’re being tested in women’s and men’s basketball about three times a week, and if there are challenges in all of that, we have immediate care that we are able to give them, and I am not sure that you could get that if you weren’t in our care. Does it require some sacrifices to Kyra’s point, absolutely it does. There are some challenges in there, but there is also lessons in all of that. Things that you desire and things that you want to do and things that you are trying to achieve don’t just come because you want them to, there are some things that you have to work your way through and fight your way to get to. That’s the case in this pandemic. We’re having to fight through an awful lot of things – the ability for us to interact face-to-face with our teams each and every day is difficult, really difficult. It is difficult to have team meals, it’s difficult to travel, it is a real challenge. And, I will tell you this, too, the staffs are tired. The medical staffs, the strength and conditioning staffs, they’re tired. They have all worked so hard operationally to get this thing up and running, it’s a lot. If you just watch what is going on at a women’s basketball game and the way that they’re on the side of the court where those chairs are, it’s fascinating and I just think it is much more difficult to coach the game. Where Kyra might be able to say, sit here and I am going to talk to you for a couple of minutes, that person is 20 feet away in a chair isolated, and she can’t talk to her and coach the game out here and you’re away from your team, and it is way different to coach your team ever before, and it makes it very difficult. That’s why coaching in film sessions, or coaching in practice, or coaching in your film room are very imperative that you maximize that and get that right because on the floor coaching is so much more difficult than it used to be in my opinion. I won’t speak for coach, but I think it is more difficult. I’ve watched it. But I’m proud of our staff and how hard they have worked, and I am proud of our young people. They have been true to the protocol, they have done what they have been asked to do. We are one of only two football teams that went through the 11 straight weeks and have made it through. Our basketball teams have played, we’ve only had one missed opportunity between the two basketball teams. Our volleyball team made it through eight, and you know, I say made it through, there is an accomplishment in that. There is an effort that it took to get those things done. Our soccer teams competed the deal in a fall session, they’ll go on and compete in the spring. So, we’ll have all 22 sports competing in the spring session. 22 sports teams will compete this spring. That will be an absolute load on our facilities, on our coaches and our staffs. So, I am really proud of what our coaches, staffs and student-athletes are doing right now to give us a chance to step forward and do the things that we’d like.”
On your thoughts when Rhyne Howard and Tatyana Wyatt were suspended at the beginning of the season…
“Frankly, I didn’t know anything about it until she told me. So, I will be real honest with you, she walked in and we started talking about this, then she said I need to tell you something and she told me. I said welp, that tells me a lot about how she is going to lead. That’s not the reason why all of that occurred, but she managed it right up front, right out of the shoot in a straight forward way. So, I think that uh, she has referenced it a couple of times in her comments that this is a lot more than basketball. If we just play basketball and that is all we do, that is all we give our young people, in any way shape or form, that is not what we are here for. We live by a little saying around here and it goes, you give us four, we will give you 40. That’s the next four years of your life, and we will give you 40. That’s what Kyra and her staff are preparing these young women for is the next 40. How to manage their lives after they walk out of the doors of the University of Kentucky. The messaging to me early on was this is the standard to which we will set our program, and you will adhere to it, and when your best player needs to sit down to have that example of this is what we are doing and making sure we get it right, then that takes a lot of courage, right out of the shoot, that takes a lot of courage, and so I admire her for the way she managed it, and I think that lessons were learned, we step forward, we put that behind us and we move forward. I think that is exactly what they have done. I think that we will be better for it.”
On if you will travel with the women’s basketball team to DePaul…
“I just want to know who scheduled this game. I know (DeWayne) Peevy is excited to have the Wildcats in town, and I know it will be a good one for them. I probably won’t be traveling up for that one, I have a few things that I need to tend to here, and frankly we are trying to keep protocol as tight as we can, they don’t need another body floating around there, so we will let them handle it, but I will wave at DeWayne from afar. So, I’m happy for him and proud of the job he is doing, he is doing a great job at DePaul.”