SOURCES: Kenny Brooks was officially offered Virginia job but turned it down to stay at Kentucky

On KSR+ on Saturday, KSR reported that Kentucky women’s basketball head coach Kenny Brooks had emerged as a possible candidate for the Virginia opening. Discussion from sources regarding the two parties quieted down over the weekend and ramped back up Monday night, when the chances of Brooks leaving for Charlottesville appeared to be at a climax before things switched gears early Tuesday.

Tuesday evening, Virginia named Aaron Roussell as the program’s next head coach. Roussell had spent the past seven years coaching at Richmond, where he turned the Spiders from a sub-.500 mid-major into a legitimate top 25 team. Roussell, on paper, is a very good hire for the Hoos, but it’s not quite Kenny Brooks.

As it turns out, Brooks was officially offered the Virginia job but ended up turning it down to stay at Kentucky, multiple sources told KSR.

KSR reported on social media early Tuesday afternoon that it started to seem like Brooks would not certainly accept an offer if he was given one by Virginia, and that obviously, ended up being the case.

Sources told KSR that Brooks was Virginia’s real lone attempt at making a completely landscape-altering hire before dialing things back. Additionally, Kentucky has shown that it is willing to invest heavily in women’s basketball, and even with Mitch Barnhart stepping down as athletic director on June 30, sources believe that Kentucky will not take much of a hit — if at all — when it comes to funding for the women’s basketball program.

Virginia did not make a significant enough of an offer to ultimately sway Brooks to depart Lexington after just two seasons at the helm. Despite the fact that the founder of Reddit, Alex Ohanian, is a big women’s basketball booster and that Virginia’s athletic director, Carla Williams, has a background in women’s basketball, their offer to Brooks was well short of the funding and salary that Brooks is and will be getting at Kentucky.

Brooks is heading into year three of his contract with Kentucky, and he is slated to make $1.5 million this year. Sources told KSR that Brooks’ offer from Virginia didn’t break a million per year. That would be considered a step up for most coaches, but Brooks is one of the 10 highest paid women’s college basketball coaches in America. Obviously, he would have taken a significant pay cut to go to Virginia.

Of course, Brooks is from the state of Virginia and has family around the Charlottesville area, but at the end of the day, Kentucky has invested enough in women’s basketball to keep the Final Four head coach around.

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