For Maci Morris, interacting with fans during her four-year career at the University of Kentucky was never really an option. It was something she not only enjoyed doing, but something she knew she had to do.
“I grew up a Kentucky fan (in Bell County). I always told myself I would not want to be turned down for an autograph or picture with somebody I looked up to. BBN (Big Blue Nation) always supported me since I stepped on campus and some before that,” said Morris. “I am super grateful for all that support for four years. Fans were so supportive and never said a bad thing about me. It was easy to be gracious with all of them.”
That continued last week with Morris having three autograph stops across the state along with men’s basketball senior Jonny David.
“Makayla Epps did something similar after her senior year and being a Kentucky kid, I thought I would do it, too,” Morris said. “Me and Jonny got to talking about it and decided we wanted to do that. It’s like a farewell tour so I can see fans one last time.”
Morris averaged 15.1 points per game as a senior and hit 75 3-pointers. Her 45.2 percent mark from 3-point range was best in the Southeastern Conference and sixth best nationally. She scored 1,692 career points, sixth on UK’s all-time list, and her 252 career 3-pointers are second al time. Her 41.1 percent career mark from 3-point range is the all-time best at UK.
She did all that even though her IT band — the iliotibial band — was “really painful” the second half of the season. The knee injury is caused by activities that bends the knee repeatedly that can cause swelling and pain around the knee and usually only gets better with rest and treatment rather than surgery.
She missed one game when she could not run in pregame drills and then sat out a week resting the knee that helped some but left her far short of 100 percent the rest of the season.
“I would be limited in certain things. It never got back to 100 percent until I was able to rest after our season ended,” Morris said. “When I was running, every time I had to bend my knee just felt like I had a knife stabbing me in the leg.”
Yet she never considered not playing or bailing out on her team. Kentucky won 25 games, finished fourth in the SEC, won a NCAA game and ended the season ranked in the top 25.
That determination is part of what her legacy will be at Kentucky.
What does she hope her legacy will be?
“Proving that coming from a small-town you can still make it as long as you put in hard work,” Morris, who has signed a tryout contract with the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, said. “You can leave a legacy and influence so many people doing that. That’s what I tried to do. My faith is really big and I tried to spread that, too.”