Kentucky rolled out the red carpet for Jennifer O’Neill this weekend.
The St. Michael Academy senior guard had her official visit to Lexington, attended Midnight Madness on Friday night and watched as the Kentucky football team pulled off its first victory against Auburn since 1966 on Saturday. At the end of the weekend, O’Neill decided to choose the Wildcats over Georgia and California, she told The Post on Sunday.
“She really liked her other visits,” said Apache Paschall, her coach at St. Mike’s and with the Exodus AAU program. “They must have swept her off her feet.”
The 5-foot-6 Bronx native, who led St. Mike’s to its first New York State Federation Class AA title last season, said she was impressed by the school and fan base’s devotion to hoops. Seeing new men’s basketball coach John Calipari hype up the crowd at Rupp Arena was exciting, O’Neill said.
“The arena is crazy – I mean crazy,” O’Neill said. “Between Kentucky and Louisville, it’s really a basketball state. They support it 100 percent.”
The football game was fun, too, she said, but there were other things on her mind Saturday night. She might have been in Lexington, but her heart was in The Bronx.
“They were going crazy over football,” O’Neill said. “I was looking for the Yankee game.”
O’Neill, who is ranked in the top 30 among seniors in the country by various media outlets, said the Kentucky coaching staff might give her the opportunity to start from Day One. She also really appreciated the love and loyalty she was shown by the coaches. Assistant coach Matt Insell was a regular at Exodus games all over the country and head coach Matthew Mitchell was a frequent spectator.
“Every time I looked up, they were there,” O’Neill said.
Paschall said hard work is what got O’Neill to where she is today. She’s spent the past two years living with renowned trainer Jerry Powell, a father figure to her, on Long Island. The coach added that he never would have guessed three years ago that she would be committing to an SEC school – the same conference as Tennessee and LSU – when she was a senior.
“Freshman year, she was a train wreck,” Paschall said. “There was no way anyone on this planet would have guessed she’d be as good as she is. It’s been an incredible journey, but a relatively short one.”
There was another thing O’Neill noticed about Kentucky, too. It’s a far cry from The Bronx. The city girl is going to need some time to adjust.
“Kentucky is real country,” O’Neill said. “It’s nothing like New York. It’s like all fields and horses.
“But basketball is basketball wherever you go.”