Matthew Mitchell is in the unique position of having to try to build his team and form an identity while also playing a schedule that features six games in a 13-day span. He’s keeping a constant eye on the conference season and beyond, but at the same time, he wants to continue to pick up wins. Besides, UK needs to take care of business on its home floor to best position itself for March.Weighing and reconciling priorities is just part of the job at this level, and Mitchell knows it.”It’s a balancing act,” Mitchell said. “You definitely want to give your players enough preparation and enough information so they can be successful in the game while you’re also trying to build what your team is going to be.”The Wildcats, who moved to 2-0 with a win on Tuesday against Jacksonville State, will have only one day of preparation before the Northeastern Huskies come in to Memorial Coliseum for a game at 7 p.m. Thursday. Mitchell knows he owes it to his players to teach them enough about their opponents to feel comfortable, but practice won’t be all about Northeastern either.”There are certain things that have to happen in practice (on Wednesday) that don’t have anything to do with Northeastern specifically, but could still help us have success with them,” Mitchell said. “Clearly we need to make sure we give the players enough information about Northeastern where they feel prepared and can go out and play. It’s a little bit different at this time of year than as the season progresses.”More than anything else, Mitchell will be keeping a watchful eye on his team’s intensity, which will be thoroughly tested by this stretch of games. On the positive side, tournament play will be the only time the Cats face similar circumstances with multiple games coming on the heels of one another.”I think the big thing for us is the ability to sustain intensity over the course of a long season,” Mitchell said. “We’re going to play a lot of games this year and the plan is for this team is to get into postseason and try to compete for championships in the SEC and the NCAA. For us to do that, we’re going to have to be a team that can sustain an effort and sustain intensity over the course of the year.”The intensity was certainly there in a 100-25 victory to open the home stand, when the Wildcats forced a school-record 48 turnovers. There are lessons to be learned from the big win, but at the same time, the Cats must move forward.”Yesterday was clearly a great day for us,” Mitchell said. “Records were broken yesterday and the players’ mindset could be feeling really good and that’s fine if we can stay focused on the realities of what we need to do to be good. We can’t really worry about yesterday. We have to turn the page on get on to the next thing in front of us.”The only area where UK left a bit to be desired against Jacksonville State was in half-court offense. In spite of scoring 50 points off turnovers and 26 on fast breaks, UK managed just 38-for-90 (42.2 percent) from the field. UK scored 68 points in the paint, but most of those were either on drives, run outs our put backs rather than post-ups. At this early point in the season, UK’s perimeter and inside players aren’t quite on the same page.”Our timing is not great yet,” Mitchell said. “When a pass is in the air, a post player needs to be getting position at that point in time and we’re just standing around too much.”However, that shouldn’t come as a major surprise. Only over the past week or so have the Wildcats really begun to work on their half-court sets simply because defense has been the overriding emphasis.”We try to build our defense first and offense sort of lags behind a little bit,” Mitchell said. “It’s so important to get our minds set that our identity as a basketball team and program will always start at the defensive end of the floor. I think that’s the formula for us to be successful.”If that approach means the Cats are going to be as good defensively as they were on Tuesday, their offense can probably afford to take some time to develop.