For the first time since 2022, Kentucky women’s basketball is in the running for a national championship following Sunday night’s bracket reveal.
The Wildcats secured a No. 4 seed in the 2025 NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament and are set to host the first and second rounds inside Historic Memorial Coliseum; the Cats are 6-5 all-time in the Tournament while playing in Lexington.
Kentucky will face No. 13 seed Liberty, the Conference USA champions, in the first round on Friday, March 21. The winner will then face either fifth-seeded Kansas State or No. 12 Fairfield.
The Cats have been placed in the Spokane 4 region, ruled by the No. 1 University of Southern California. The Trojans have consistently proven themselves as a national title contender, led by JuJu Watkins, the 2025 Big Ten Player of the Year and a semi-finalist for National Defensive Player of the Year.
The No. 2 UConn Huskies, also in the bracket, boast one of the other top players in the country with Paige Bueckers, who is expected to go first overall in the 2025 WNBA draft as one of the most decorated collegiate women’s basketball athletes in history.
The Cats would also find a familiar foe in Oklahoma, a team with which they have had a bittersweet history this season. The teams first met in early February at Oklahoma, where Kentucky’s star guard Georgia Amoore dropped a career-high 43 points to lead the UK to victory.
The two met again in the third round of the 2025 SEC Tournament, and the Sooners came prepared for revenge. Since the loss to Kentucky, OU had gone undefeated, and that streak would continue as it upset Kentucky 69-65, making the Cats a one-and-done in the conference tournament.
The only other team Kentucky has faced within the region is Mississippi State, defeating the Bulldogs in its first conference matchup of the season. Overall, the bracket contains 10 SEC teams, and Kentucky ended the year by going 6-4 against its conference foes.
Outside of the SEC, Kentucky has faced three teams on the 68-team bracket, pulling off wins against No. 7 Louisville and No. 8 Illinois, who both will compete in the Birmingham 3 Region, while having one loss to No. 3 North Carolina, which sits in the Birmingham 2 Region.
The madness of March begins Wednesday, March 19, and Thursday, March 20, with the First Four. The teams competing include High Point, William & Mary, UC San Diego, Southern, Columbia, Washington, Iowa State and Princeton.
Kentucky will play the Liberty Flames this Friday, March 21, inside Historic Memorial Coliseum in Lexington. The game will tip off at noon ET.
For the first time in a long time, the women’s program has a chance to make history and take Kentucky further than it has ever gone in March now that Head Coach Kenny Brooks is in charge.
However, this year is also expected to be one of the toughest tournament brackets in history, given the depth of the teams led by dominant SEC and Big Ten conferences.
Brooks and his team will face a challenging path, and the question has now become glaringly clear: Is this the team that can take Kentucky to its first-ever Final Four?
