Reality set in last week for the UK women’s basketball team.The buzz felt by the top-25 rankings, the team’s best conference run in school history and competing for a Southeastern Conference title fizzled last week with two straight losses at Tennessee and at Auburn. It was the first back-to-back losses of the season and first significant setback the Cats have faced this year.The underdog mentality that fueled UK to second place in the SEC was noticeably absent in both losses. For the first time all season, Kentucky let the other team determine the tempo and become the aggressors. Were the Cats resting on their laurels?If they were, nobody could blame them. Sweeping the major SEC awards (Coach, Player and Freshman of the Year), competing with Tennessee for a conference title and riding a wave of unparalleled hoops excitement in Lexington is all pretty heady stuff.  Excuse a group of college kids if they got caught up in the hype.”We’re in a bit of uncharted waters,” head coach Matthew Mitchell said, “and I’m not afraid to say that.”Better now to discover that than the postseason when a loss means an offseason of learning. For the most part, the players have maintained their level-headedness during the frenzy of a historic run. They’ve listened to their coach preach the one-game mentality, and, until the Tennessee-Auburn stretch, have played with the same intensity no matter if the opponent was Florida or Florida A&M. Now, the Cats will have to rediscover that intensity in time for the SEC Tournament, which starts Thursday in Duluth, Ga. The second-seeded Cats have earned a first-round bye and will face the winner of the Auburn-Florida matchup on Friday at 2:30 p.m.It’s a new situation for UK, which, for the first time since the 2005-06 season, will enter the tournament as one of the favorites. Instead of battling for their postseason lives, the Cats are basically assured of making the NCAA Tournament. “The challenge all season long for us as a coaching staff is to try to understand how to deal with being in a different situation,” Mitchell said. “I thought the team did a really good job of handling one game at a time (during the regular season) and staying focused and staying locked in on what they needed to do, and that’s obvious by the record.”Regardless of the different scenario, the stakes, as far as the team is concerned, remain the same – win the conference tournament. UK must use that mentality when its postseason run starts Friday or else it will get bounced from the SEC and NCAA tournaments just as easily as it lost last week.”We have to come in with the mentality that we have to play hard no matter what,” said junior forward and SEC Player of the Year Victoria Dunlap. “Just because we’re already set for the NCAA Tournament doesn’t mean we can settle for finishing second in the SEC. We have to get better and better.”Despite the SEC honors delivered Monday to Kentucky – which some could view as a distraction – they have regained the disrespected, overlooked hunger that led them to their current position in the first place.”The loss that we had to Auburn is humbling,” SEC Freshman of the Year A’dia Mathies said. “Every game we play we have to fight. We have to come out and play aggressive and play defense and do everything we did that got us to this point. Just as easy as we beat Auburn the first time, we lost to them the second time.”Mitchell took blame for the loss to Auburn on Sunday. Instead of imposing their will on the Tigers with their traditional up-tempo full-court press, the Cats tried to play Auburn with a half-court man-to-man trap. That, Mitchell said he sent the wrong signal to his team not to be aggressive.”I think this team needs the green light to go and go play aggressive,” Mitchell said.UK has defeated every team on its side of the bracket but does face the prospect of playing Auburn again. The Tigers, like Tennessee, pose problems in the interior because of their size and physicality.When the Cats have gone up against bigger, stronger teams this season, they’ve struggled. The two games with Auburn are the only two games Dunlap has failed to reach double-figure scoring.Should UK match up with Auburn or Tennessee along the way, Mitchell said the Cats will play to their strength instead of countering the other team’s force. “Now we’re at a time when you have to step up and play and you have to play the style that has enabled to be in the position we’re in,” Mitchell said. “I’m not going to be as worried about the things I was worried about on Sunday. Whoever is ready to go, we’re going to play our style and see if that can be good enough to win. At least we’ll be true to our identity.”That sounds more like the attitude that won UK 23 games this season. While the stakes might be different, the scenario remains the same. As it’s been all season, it’s about this team and its mentality – not the accolades, awards, rankings and expectations that comes with success.”We have the opportunity to beat anybody we play, but we better darn sure understand that if we don’t prepare and play like heck, we have the opportunity to lose,” Mitchell said. “We don’t really focus a lot on what everybody else is saying. We need to come together here.”Reality couldn’t have sunk in at a better time.