Virginia Tech head coach Kenny Brooks became the first Black head coach to win the ACC women’s basketball tournament crown Sunday when his 3-seed Hokies defeated the 4-seed Louisville Cardinals 75-67.
With the win, Virginia Tech is projected to move up to the 1-line in the NCAA tournament bracket, according to ESPN bracketologist Charlie Creme. The Hokies took down 6-seed Miami and 2-seed Duke this weekend in Greensboro, North Carolina, prior to prevailing over the Cardinals and securing their first ACC tournament title. Virginia Tech had never appeared in an ACC tournament championship game before Sunday.
Brooks’ accomplishment comes days after Notre Dame head coach Niele Ivey became the first Black coach to win the conference’s regular-season championship.
Brooks, who was hired in Blacksburg ahead of the 2016-17 season following a successful career at James Madison, has made Virginia Tech a national contender after years of irrelevance. Since he took the helm, the Hokies have appeared in the WNIT or NCAA tournament each season, and with the win Sunday locked up a third consecutive appearance in the latter.
“This honor, I didn’t know it until they told me after the game. If you’d asked me about five, 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have embraced it as much. Honestly, being a Black head coach in a women’s sport, it is tough. It really is,” Brooks said, noting that he is the only Black male head coach at the Power 5 level. “I think that there are coaches out there that are definitely worthy of an opportunity. So for me, I’ve embraced that role. I’ve embraced it when people come up to me, other coaches, when they text me, when they DM me.”
Brooks said what really opened his eyes to his unique position in the sport was how he had to “bring together” his Black and white players despite their different experiences with racism and discrimination during the country’s racial injustice reckoning in the summer of 2020.
“In doing so, I had to open myself up and I was very vulnerable,” Brooks said. “They looked at me for a long time as the leader and they don’t understand that I had to go through struggles. I’ve been called bad words. I’ve been called those words before that they hear that are so disgusting to them. I’ve been discriminated against. I won a lot of basketball games at James Madison and it took [Virginia Tech athletic director] Whit Babcock to give me a call before I had an opportunity to get to this level.
“So I’ve embraced the opportunity now and I’m championing for a lot of my fellow peers. And I think that if I can continue to run a program like this, and I can continue to win and we win on a big stage, I think it can open up doors for a lot of other guys who look like me. … I’m good for the game. There’s a lot of Black coaches, males also, that are good for the game. Let’s just get the best people out there, give them an opportunity and good things like this will happen.”
Charlene Curtis, the first Black women’s basketball head coach in the ACC, who served at Wake Forest from 1997 to 2004, died last summer from cancer.
The Hokies have now won 11 straight games, last losing to Duke on Jan. 26. And after bowing out of the 2022 NCAA tournament in the first round following a tough matchup against Florida Gulf Coast, the Hokies are hoping to elevate their program to new heights over the coming weeks. The furthest they’ve advanced in March is the Sweet 16 under then-head coach Bonnie Henrickson in 1999.
“I just can’t say enough about Coach Brooks and what he’s done for this program and for me personally,” said two-time ACC Player of the Year Elizabeth Kitley, who finished with 20 points Sunday. “It’s just really awesome for everything that we talked about to happen. One of our biggest goals, we did it together and I’m just really proud and happy.”
Added Georgia Amoore, the ACC tournament MVP, who scored 25 points in the final: “He’s my coach of the year, he always will be. He’s done so much for us, so much for the team. And just look at the program, it’s just on an upward trend and I think this has just really solidified what he’s doing and has solidified Virginia Tech as a legit contender.”
