Big Blue Madness is the beginning of two new eras of Kentucky basketball in Lexington as Mark Pope and Kenny Brooks make their debuts inside Rupp Arena to tip off the season. Excitement is palpable on either side, recent begins essential to get the boys’s and girls’s applications again atop the SEC standings and making postseason runs — or just collaborating in postseason play at all.
Brooks, who led Virginia Tech to the 2023 NCAA Final Four and gained the 2024 ACC common season championship, didn’t depart a comfy scenario to lose. He got here to Lexington to be the chief of a blue blood program with title aspirations and potential. That journey begins tonight when he participates in his first Madness.
It’s a legendary evening — one in every of hopefully many to return with Brooks in blue and white.
“It’s kind of sneaking up on me, because every day, somebody tells me something else I have to do (laughs),” Brooks mentioned at UK Media Day. “I’m no stranger to it. Obviously, it’s legendary and people have been very excited about it.”
It’s a evening of leisure and celebration, however Brooks would be the first to inform you he’s not right here to placed on a present. All he cares about is teaching basketball and profitable video games.
Don’t count on any loopy dances or theatrics out of him — though he might let unfastened just a bit when he feels the sold-out Rupp Arena at its peak.
Either manner, that’s not the precedence.
“I do know that I’m not riding out in a motorcycle and I’m not dropping down from the rafters. I think they hired me to be a coach. If they wanted me to be an entertainer, they got the wrong person (laughs),” he mentioned. “I don’t know, 24,000 cheering for you? I might come out of character a little bit and do something. It’s exciting.”
His business-only strategy shouldn’t and gained’t take away from the significance and magnitude of the occasion, although. He is aware of it’s an necessary recruiting software with an unbelievable variety of eyes on his crew and program on faculty basketball’s greatest stage.
Others couldn’t capitalize on their preseason tip-off occasions — he wouldn’t title names, however it’s not a well-kept secret Kentucky’s greatest in-state rival fumbled theirs like Lamar Jackson in 2016.
Brooks needs to verify they do that the precise manner, promoting the model the best way it deserves to be offered.
“You look across the country and we have an eye on things because we have recruits that go to other places that — like what happened last week,” he mentioned. “I gained’t say the names of locations that attempt to emulate Big Blue Madness, however I believe what we do right here and the best way it’s carried out right here, it’s legendary. At Virginia Tech and James Madison, I noticed Big Blue Madness and that’s the one that you simply felt it was the very best one.
“Anything else is just imitation. I’m excited to be a part of it.”
He might not dance and sing, however he’ll actually look the half — if his daughter, sophomore guard Gabby Brooks, has something to say about that, at least.
“I don’t have my fit yet. That’s the one thing about having a daughter on the team,” he mentioned. “She is going to be on me because she says she doesn’t want to have secondhand embarrassment (laughs). So whatever I walk out in, she has to approve it. It’s kind of a little bit of pressure.”
