Cats Need Focus to Protect Position, Momentum

For the last few weeks, the women’s basketball rankings have looked different than they have in years.

Kentucky is absent. Six losses in 20 games through the first two-and-a-half months of the season have knocked the Wildcats into unfamiliar territory.

But when the NCAA released its first regular-season top-16 rankings – a progress report on the road to NCAA Tournament seeding – there UK was at No. 15.

Though the rest of NCAA’s top 16 also appeared in the top 16 of both the AP Top 25 and USA Today Coaches Poll, Matthew Mitchell wasn’t surprised by the news in the least.

“They don’t go by rankings,” Mitchell said. “They made it real clear to us a few years back, what you need to do if you want to be considered one of the best teams in the country and you want to be a team that’s in that top 16 – which is incredibly important because you get the opportunity to host – it’s not a mystery. You play a real difficult schedule and you win games.”

UK (14-6, 5-2 SEC) is certainly covered on the scheduling front. The Cats have the nation’s third-best strength of schedule, which is the driving force behind their RPI of No. 14.

Not surprisingly, Mitchell isn’t spending a lot of time thinking about all that.

“The team has done a great job through however many games we’ve played,” Mitchell said. “They’re in a position where they can improve, but they’re also in a position where it can go away. So, again, we’re just trying to stay focused for our game on Thursday (and practice) on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon as hard as we can. And then Thursday afternoon, for one hour before we play, and that’s where all of our energy is going right now.”

All that preparation is being directed toward a Thursday matchup with Ole Miss (13-7, 2-5 SEC). 

“I think the backcourt is probably the most explosive that we’ve seen and they’ve got a great power game,” Mitchell said. “I think Taylor Manuel is one of the most powerful post players in the league. So, real test for our team. We must prepare well. Gonna be a tough game tomorrow night.”

With that schedule, tough games have of course been the norm. Most recently, UK ran its winning streak to four games by toppling Auburn and LSU – both ranked among the RPI top 30 – on the road. That’s a far cry from a 77-68 loss against Texas A&M on Jan. 8 in which the Cats were outmatched in terms of effort.

“They have come many, many miles, in the last two weeks and I am very, very proud of them,” Mitchell said. “They have spectacular attitudes and the way we handled that road trip and the difficulties of that.”

The difficulties came in the form of both challenging opponents and circumstances. With LSU and Auburn so close geographically and only two days between games, the Cats didn’t return home to Lexington. And tornado warnings in Alabama only served to complicate matters.

“We haven’t won in Baton Rouge in a long time and jumped all over them and got a great win,” Mitchell said. “We dealt with the weather and they were out of their hotel rooms and tornado drills all week and to come out and beat a team like Auburn.” 

That’s a lot of positive momentum to carry into a return to Memorial Coliseum, but it’s momentum that can disappear quickly.

“So, they are a great group of kids and working hard,” Mitchell said. “We just can’t lose focus or we can become very average very quick. So, we just have to continue to try to improve defensively and I think offensively we are doing some good things.”