ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Motivational ploys at this time of year are a dime a dozen. With so many teams looking to find that extra edge for an extended NCAA Tournament run, coaches turn to any number of sayings emblazoned on t-shirts, wrist bands and the like as a last-ditch effort to motivate their teams.Matthew Mitchell and the Kentucky women’s basketball have a theme for their March Madness run, but it’s far from a Hail Mary attempt to try to propel them to the Final Four. Recognizing his team’s goal of a trip to Indianapolis to the Final Four at the beginning of the season, Mitchell wanted to impart to his team the long, arduous voyage that awaited them by educating his players about the challenges endured by travelers of the Oregon Trail.”In trying to prepare for the season, I just got to looking at the journey people made on the Oregon Trail to try to make it to a better place,” Mitchell said. “Indianapolis is not very far from Lexington, but I wanted to try to symbolize that it was going to be a long season. It was going to be five, six months of hard work.Mitchell’s inspiration came from his background as a history teacher. He knew that people traversing the Oregon Trail traveled 15 miles a day for months to arrive at a destination 2,000 miles away, so he instituted a doctrine of “15 MAD” that imparted to his players that they would need to work every day.”The folks on the Oregon Trail had to go 2,000 miles, but they could only go 15 miles a day,” “They had to have the right supplies in the wagon, they couldn’t hold onto things that would slow them down, so there’s a lot of symbolism there. Although his players were more likely to know about the Oregon Trail from the famous computer game, senior forward Victoria Dunlap and her teammates embraced the metaphor.”At the beginning of the year, Coach Mitchell talked about the journey getting through the season and that getting to Indianapolis for the championship wouldn’t be easy,” Dunlap said. “The people that were strong enough to make it there were going to have to push through and fight through it. Whether you were sick or you were hurt, you wanted to get to a better place and make yourself better.”After a successful season thus far that resulted in a 24-8 record, a second-place regular-season finish in the Southeastern Conference and a trip to the finals of the SEC Tournament, the Wildcats are taking their mantra into the stretch run of their season. Ironically, the Wildcats will have to travel nearly as far westward as those Oregon Trail settlers did in the 19th century to make it out of the finals of the Spokane Region.UK opens NCAA Tournament play on Saturday in Albuquerque, N.M., as a four seed playing against 13th-seeded Hampton (25-6) of the Mid Eastern Athletic Conference. The Wildcats may be seed-line favorites when the teams take the floor on at 6:30 p.m. ET, but the Lady Pirates have UK’s full attention.”I’m very impressed with Hampton,” Mitchell said. “They have a great record. They’re on a tremendous winning streak right now. They have not lost a game in a while so they have to be coming in with tremendous confidence.”The winning streak Mitchell is referring to is a 13-game stretch dating back to a Jan. 22 loss to Bethune-Cookman. In that time, the Lady Pirates have defeated all but two of their opponents by double digits, thoroughly dominating the MEAC in the process. Additionally, Hampton is 24-2 since a 1-4 start to their season, defeating Florida, an SEC rival of UK, 69-54 along the way.Hampton is led by second-year head coach David Six, who boasts an experienced starting lineup with four juniors and one senior. Guard Jericka Jenkins, forward Quanneisha Perry and guard Choicetta McMillan average double figures in scoring for the Lady Pirates and Jenkins is second in the nation with 7.3 assists per contest.”They seem to play with a ton of confidence,” Mitchell said of Hampton. “They seem to know what they need to do to win and they stick to that. I think this is a tough game for us. What we’ve tried to tell the team is that you don’t worry about the (seeds) in front of the names. All that gets thrown out when you go between the lines.”
With their stellar record season, the Lady Pirates have every reason to believe they can play with the Wildcats.”This is a fantastic opportunity for us,” Six said. “I would like to think we can compete against anybody. We’re going to go out there and play our style and I’m sure they’ll (do the same). We played a great (James Madison) team at the beginning of the year and won at JMU. We played a great Florida team, so I think we do have confidence going into the game.”Much like Kentucky, Hampton’s team is triggered by defense. Hampton is undersized and gets after opponents with pressure-filled man-to-man defense. The Lady Pirates used that style to topple Florida and will look to do the same against Kentucky.”The first thing we said about the Florida game was we’re only going to win by defense,” two-time MEAC Defensive Player of the Year Perry said. “We can’t outscore a team like Florida, we can’t outscore a team like Kentucky. Our mindset is just defense. We’re just going to lock down, play hard and we’re going to see what the outcome (is).”Kentucky is concerned about the challenges that Hampton will present, but as they have all year, and especially in tournament play, the Wildcats are worried about playing their own brand of up-tempo, high-pressure basketball. “That’s our bread and butter,” Dunlap said. “That’s what we do best, especially playing defense with a lot of pressure. I think with a tournament like this not many people have that type of mindset for games. We are used to it. That’s the way we practice and the way we play in all our games and that’s what we are looking to do in the tournament.”Like Oregon Trail settlers, the Wildcats’ wagon has been in the proverbial ditch on a number of occasions this season. Mitchell has had to guide the Wildcats back on the trail of playing their brand of basketball and the Oregon Trail analogy has played a role in that.Most recently, the Wildcats were humbled by a hot-shooting Tennessee team in the finals of the SEC Tournament. Dunlap says that she’s not concerned about how she and her teammates will respond as they head in the Big Dance.”Throughout the season we were going to have ups and downs and even in low times we have to get the wagon back on the trail and fix it up,” Dunlap said. “We have to make sure its right and just keep going and not worry about the past.”