A new and improved Blue-White game was held at the Historical Memorial Coliseum venue to open up the 2024-25 season. This year’s game is much different than years past. Mark Pope and Kenny Brooks brought the show back to Lexington after having it in various locations throughout the state of Kentucky in the past few seasons under the former coaches.

In year’s past these games were used as a way to fundraise for natural disasters but this year it was solely focused on raising NIL funds for the program. As this came as a surprise to most, I believe this will be a start to a new era. Colleges are looking for any opportunity to give back to their players during this wild new wave of college sports. With that being said, all proceeds of this event will go towards the Club Blue NIL collective that Kentucky wishes to be out on the forefront in. This was a great way to allow fans to get a “first look” at the men’s and women’s teams in true game form. This event did not disappoint, to say the least.

The event was kicked off with the introduction of the women’s team. It began with warmup drills from the Blue and White teams, broken up into 4 separate quarters. It included drills that allowed them to showcase their sharp-shooting, their post skills, and many more of the things that we are gonna see throughout the season by this very talented women’s team. 

They decided to break up the women’s drills with an appearance from men’s players Jaxon Robinson & Ansley Almonor. During this time they brought two fans onto the court and allowed them to battle in a drill for a pot of $250 dollars. The fans struggled but none went home empty handed. After both not making a single basket, they split the pot 50/50 and both fans went home happy. But it didn’t stop there. The rematch of the men’s BBM 3-point contest between Travis Perry & Trent Noah was settled between two young fans in a three-point, free-throw, and layup contest. This time around Trent’s team got the best of Travis’. One fan left with $250 and the other one left walking away with $100 for participating. Giving back to the fans who made it out seemed to be the theme early in the night. 

This was followed by a scrimmage between the women’s team and their boy’s practice team. The 6-foot-5 transfer center, Clara Strack, started things off by showing her post dominance. Georgia Amoore wasn’t shy and showed off her skills early as well. Her ability to run the offense was very impressive. One of the first substitutions brought in Clara Silva and to say that she impressed the crowd was an understatement. She came out firing, hitting her first 3 shots from the field including a couple nice fadeaway shots in the paint that I believe we will see much more of this season from the freshman phenom.

At the halfway mark of this scrimmage, the women’s team led 31-14. During this time we got to hear from star transfer, Georgia Amoore, and she shared her thoughts on how well this team has jelled together so far with such a short amount of time together. She wasn’t the only star we got to see during this break. Men’s point guard Lamont Butler made an appearance at half court with a dance-off vs. the mascot.

The second half of this scrimmage was just as impressive with a little more shooting involved. Cassidy Rowe was one of the ones that stood out from the play of the game. At the 2-minute mark, Dazia Lawrence said their team is using this event as a way to get better and even mentioned that they “will be watching film on this event”, which is not a bad idea considering they have very little film together as a unit. This scrimmage was ultimately ended by the way that all of their practices are ended, which is by shooting half court shots and showing off their range. The crowd loved it.

The women’s team won their scrimmage versus their boys practice team by a score of 43-29.

The ones who were meant to shine did just that. What really stood out to me during this scrimmage was the size of this year’s roster and their ability to get to the basket. We all know this year’s brand new group will be able to shoot the ball, but seeing the paint presence and overall size of this team is a very nice sigh of relief. They are going to be very hard to stop in the post and I must say that when Georgia Amoore is on the court all aspects of their game just seems to flow so well.

Following the women’s part of the 2024-25 Blue-White scrimmage, the media had the chance to speak with Kentucky women’s basketball head coach Kenny Brooks, which we have up on our YouTube channel.

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