Samantha Mahoney

Classroom

Mahoney has a cumulative 3.212 grade point average in her double major of business accounting and finance. She was named to the SEC Academic Honor Roll in 2006 and 2007 and aspires to be a certified public accountant.

Character

Mahoney is a person with great integrity and work ethic. She learned to box last summer with a personal trainer in order to get into better shape. She improved her overall strength and aggressiveness and lost approximately 15 pounds. Her attitude on the court is one of leadership and confidence. Head coach Matthew Mitchell says this about Mahoney, “I don’t have enough time to describe how good I think Sam is. She has everything that a player would want. She is a great shooter, she has strength, she can jump, she has a great first step. She shows a lot of toughness defensively and in rebounding. She has taken more of a vocal leadership role as a senior and she really is just an unbelievable player.”

Community

Mahoney currently volunteers as UK’s outreach representative for women’s basketball. She has been a guest speaker at various elementary schools around the community and is also a frequent visitor to Veteran’s Hospital. She helped organize a food drive to benefit God’s Pantry and served as a mentor at Deep Springs Elementary. She was her school’s SEC Good Works Team representative for 2007-08.

Competition

Mahoney has been the team’s No. 1 or No. 2 leading scorer all three seasons as a Wildcat. She averaged 12.4 points per game last season and became the 19th player in school history to eclipse the 1,000-point mark. She has 1,153 career points and with another sucessful season could break into the top 10 on the career scoring chart. She played a team-high 30.62 mpg last season. She scored a career-high 27 points against intrastate rival Louisville in 2006. She led UK in scoring in 2005-06 with 11.9 ppg and helped lead UK to its first NCAA Tournament appearance since 1999. She is a two-time All-SEC second team selection by the league coaches (2005-06 and 2006-07) and a two-time All-SEC honorable mention selection - AP (2005-06 and 2006-07). Twice she was named to the All-SEC preseason second team (2005-06 and 2006-07) and was a member of the SEC All-Freshman Team in 2004-05. She made the all-tournament team at the Pepperdine Thanksgiving Classic (2005) and has been the SEC Player of the Week (2005).