Fresh off a pair of season-opening victories this week, the Kentucky women’s basketball program on Friday unveiled the final piece of its 2022 recruiting class.
The Wildcats received National Letters of Intent from three of its four committed players on Wednesday, with the final NLI coming in on Friday afternoon.
There were no surprises among those who signed with the Wildcats, as guards Amiya Jenkins, Cassidy Jo Rowe and Saniah Tyler, along with post player Tionna Herron, all put pen to paper to confirm their futures at Kentucky.
Jenkins and Rowe are both in-state recruits, from Anderson County High School and Shelby Valley High School, respectively, while Tyler is from Missouri and Herron is from Texas.
Four players on the current UK roster are listed as seniors, although last season didn’t count as a season of college eligibility for any player due to altered NCAA guidelines as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Here’s a closer look at each of the four future Kentucky women’s basketball players that head coach Kyra Elzy is bringing in for the 2022 class.
Amiya Jenkins
Jenkins was the most recent of the four players to commit to Kentucky, announcing her plans to come to Lexington just last month. Jenkins’ NLI was also the last of the class to come in on Friday.
Listed at 5-foot-10, Jenkins is a star backcourt presence at Anderson County High School in Lawrenceburg. Jenkins is rated as a four-star guard by ESPN and also plays AAU basketball for the Kentucky Premier program, which has several alumnae on the current UK roster in Blair Green and Emma King.
“She is athletic, explosive, fit and a competitor,” Elzy said of Jenkins. “She is a great scorer and handles the ball extremely well. Just like the others in this class, she will bring great energy to the floor with her defense. She is a Kentucky kid that fits our style and bleeds blue.”
Last season as a junior at Anderson County, Jenkins averaged 17.2 points per game on better than 54% shooting from the field, as the Bearcats went 28-3, won the 8th Region championship for the second straight season and reached the state semifinals.
Jenkins was voted to the Herald-Leader’s All-State girls’ basketball team as a First Team selection in 2021, and is expected to be a contender for Kentucky Miss Basketball this season.
A four-star prospect, Jenkins is the No. 94 player in ESPN’s national class of 2022 rankings.
“I believe for my money she’s the best defender in the state of Kentucky. She’s able to take on the best players in the state and more than hold her own,” Clay Birdwhistell, Jenkins’ high school coach at Anderson County, told the Herald-Leader. “Offensively, she’s able to get pretty much anywhere she wants to go on the floor, which is obviously a huge thing and it’s something that she’s developed as her ball handling has gotten better.”
Should Jenkins win the award, she would become the first Kentucky Miss Basketball to sign with Kentucky since Maci Morris from Bell County High School in 2015.
Cassidy Jo Rowe
From this incoming group of four players, Rowe is the only one who committed to UK before Elzy became the head coach last year.
Rowe, who is listed at 5-6, committed to UK under former head coach Matthew Mitchell in August 2018, when she was just a freshman at Shelby Valley High School in Pike County. Rowe has been coached at Shelby Valley by her father, Lonnie Rowe.
Rowe has torn both the ACL in her left knee and the ACL in her right knee during her high school career, once during a summer scrimmage with Shelby Valley and once while playing with the Kentucky Premier AAU program.
Kentucky offered a scholarship to Rowe after she tore her ACL the first time following her eighth-grade season. Rowe played in 65 high school games as a seventh- and eighth-grader.
“I took it for granted before, but I never will again,” Rowe told the Herald-Leader in January 2020 of being able to play basketball.
These injuries limited Rowe to just six games as a freshman and 19 games as a sophomore at Shelby Valley. But last season as a junior Rowe returned to full action and averaged 12.9 points per game while shooting better than 45% from the field and better than 41% from three-point range.
“We have never doubted her, and they have never doubted us,” Elzy said of the connection between Kentucky and the Rowe family. “Cassidy has the intangibles that we need: Coachable, high motor and a phenomenal work ethic. She will impact the game on both ends of the floor with her hustle and scoring ability.”
Saniah Tyler
Point guard Saniah Tyler is from Florissant, Missouri, and attends Incarnate Word Academy in Bel-Nor, Missouri, in the suburbs of St. Louis. Tyler committed to Elzy and the Wildcats in late July. Tyler announced her scholarship offer from Kentucky in September 2020, an offer that came when Mitchell was still the head coach of the Wildcats.
Tyler, who is listed at 5-6, picked UK from a final list of three schools that included Arizona State, Kentucky and Tennessee.
As a junior at Incarnate Word, Tyler helped guide her high school team to a perfect 29-0 record and a state championship. During this season, she averaged 12.7 points, 3.2 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 2.2 steals per game, while shooting better than 35% from three-point range.
Tyler was named to the all-state team for Class 6 by the Missouri Basketball Coaches Association following the state tournament, and she was also an all-state selection as a sophomore in 2020 in Class 4 with Incarnate Word.
“Explosive, versatile and leader are the three words that come to mind when I think about Saniah Tyler’s game,” Elzy said. “She has a toughness and competitive spirit about her that you notice right away. It’s a combination that we look for in recruiting and she fits the description of a Kentucky women’s basketball player.”
Tionna Herron
The first player to commit to the Kentucky program with Elzy as head coach was Herron, a post player from DeSoto (Texas) High School who announced her plans to come to UK last December, just one week after Elzy was named the full-time head coach.
Listed at 6-4, Herron helped DeSoto go 28-2 last season on its way to a Class 6A state title in Texas. During that state-title winning season, Herron averaged 12 points, eight rebounds and three blocks per game. A four-star prospect, Herron is the No. 69 player in ESPN’s national class of 2022 rankings.
Herron, who is nicknamed “Tree” and picked Kentucky over other scholarship offers that included one from Louisville, will be a welcomed post presence for a UK team with limited options at that position.
“She is tall and runs the floor well for her size. Her footwork is very impressive for her frame. When she touches the ball in the paint, it is an automatic two points,” Elzy said of Herron. “Then you factor in her ability to protect the rim and she really is a dynamic two-way player.”
On the 2021-22 roster, only three players are listed at frontcourt positions: Forwards Nyah Leveretter and Dre’una Edwards and center Olivia Owens, although Kentucky’s bigger guards such as Rhyne Howard and Treasure Hunt often operate in the paint and in post-up situations.
This story was originally published November 12, 2021 1:17 PM.
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