Mirroring her team’s play, Jennifer O’Neill had an up-and-down-and-up-again afternoon.She started off “in spectacular fashion,” according to her coach, and Kentucky built a big lead, but hit a wall in the middle portion of a Sunday showdown with Georgia. The Lady Bulldogs capitalized and UK’s 17-point margin disappeared.But over the final 97 seconds, O’Neill took over.”We had to try to regroup and then she ended the game with a big flourish and was really money down the stretch,” Matthew Mitchell said. “So it was an interesting game. Started great and ended great and the middle was something not as great.”Exactly when Kentucky needed it, the senior guard stepped up. The Wildcats trailing Georgia 72-70 in a back-and-forth Sunday showdown, O’Neill wasn’t about to let her team lose a home game it could have won against a top-25 opponent for the second time in four days.”I think at the end of the game, in this game today, she was really able to lock in and focus and correct any mistakes she was making,” Mitchell said.After Jelleah Sidney came up with a steal, Matthew Mitchell called timeout. The play he called went awry, so he called timeout again and drew up another for O’Neill, who had 13 points at the time. O’Neill used two screens and took a pass from Bria Goss. Calmly rising, O’Neill drilled a 3 with 1:37 left to give the No. 10 Cats (17-5, 6-3 Southeastern Conference) a 73-72 lead they wouldn’t relinquish.”Once it left my hands I felt pretty good about it,” O’Neill said.”It’s good to have really good players sometimes, you know, because she just made a play,” Mitchell said.The shot started a game-ending 10-0 run during which O’Neill scored eight points against No. 21/20 Georgia (17-5, 5-4 SEC). Fittingly, O’Neill grabbed the last defensive rebound and dribbled out the final eight seconds on UK’s 80-72 win on UK Hoops’ annual Alumni Day.”I think that 3 helped us gain momentum,” O’Neill said. “Everybody started getting excited, everybody started getting up on defense and we started being more aggressive on defense, which allowed us to get turnovers.”UK would get stops on its final four defensive possessions, forcing three turnovers, and O’Neill hit a driving jumper and three free throws to clinch the win. For the game, she had six rebounds and four assists to go with her 21 points.”She was fantastic overall and we needed every bit of what she gave us today,” Mitchell said.Her team-high point total came in spite of just eight attempts from the field, her lowest total in nearly a month. O’Neill hit six of those shots, 3 of 4 from 3 and 6 of 7 at the free-throw line to score more points than she has since Dec. 12.For the Cats to be their best, O’Neill needs to be aggressive. However, she’s learning to strike a balance between asserting herself and forcing things.”(Assistant coach Tamika Williams) has been teaching me how to understand how understand quality, not quantity when I’m shooting or when I have a workout,” O’Neill said.  “… That’s really it: just really paying attention to my form and why I’m missing. I don’t want to just keep shooting and missing and not understanding why I’m missing to change it.”Whatever she did on Sunday, the Cats could use more of it.

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