There are a few things non-conference play told us about the women’s basketball team.One, this team, already just four wins shy of last season’s win total, is remarkably more talented from top to bottom than last year’s team. Two, UK, which is among the nation’s leaders in turnover margin with a plus -10.8 spread a game, is a much better defensive team. And three, the Cats are faster, quicker and play a much more up-tempo game than they did a year ago.But what else do we know about this UK Hoops team as it enters conference play Thursday in the always rugged Southeastern Conference? More importantly, how good is a team that played against the nation’s 189th-ranked schedule (according to RealTimeRPI.com)?We should know more Thursday at 7 p.m. when the Cats square off against an undefeated (14-0) and nationally ranked (No. 8) Georgia team.”The intensity is at a different level and the athletes are at a different level (when you enter SEC play),” UK Hoops coach Matthew Mitchell said. “I think that your margin of error is much slimmer which magnifies the mental mistakes. If there is any beef that I have with our younger players right now it is in mental mistakes, which is just a product of youth. Those are the things that concern you.”If you are switching out on a screen or suppose to get in front of a post players, just little things that make a difference that maybe you can get away with in non-conference but get magnified in conference play. The ability to play the game mentally and figure out your assignments is at a premium.”UK has been loaded with first-year Wildcat players. From freshmen A’dia Mathies and Brittany Henderson to transfers Rebecca Gray, Keyla Snowden and Crystal Riley, they’ve all played key roles in the rebirth of the Kentucky women’s basketball program.But how they will handle conference play, when turnovers presumably will go down and baskets won’t come as easy, will tell a lot about how far this team has come in just a year’s time.”One of the big challenges for us is to try to create turnovers and score off turnovers,” Mitchell said. “We have been able to do that in non-conference but it will be interesting to me to see how that translates into conference. I don’t anticipate turning Georgia over 40 times, but can we create enough of those opportunities where we can score some will be, I think, the key to our success in the conference.”The conference opener isn’t so much about facing a nationally ranked Georgia team as it is a measuring stick for what a 12-1 non-conference mark – the best record heading into conference play since the 1990-01 season – really means. Was there substance behind those 25- and sometimes 35-point victories against so-so competition?Mitchell defended his team’s non-conference schedule Wednesday.”I think it was what this team needed,” Mitchell said. “We had some things we needed to figure out. We need to figure out style of play, we needed to figure out who could do what, so I don’t think five ranked opponents out of the gate would have been the way to go with this team.”But what happens if UK starts a tough opening week to conference play with two losses? Other than a hiccup at Middle Tennessee State, this young team has yet to face adversity. “I don’t think it’s going to crush the team (if we were to lose two games to start conference play),” Mitchell said. “I don’t think we’re that fragile. The one thing I have to do as a coach is I have to keep telling them that they’re good players, because they are, and keep trying to put them in positions where they can have success.”Mitchell summed it up best when he said there are still plenty of questions with his team, questions which should be answered in the coming weeks.One other thing we should be certain of by now: that preseason pick of finishing 11th in the league appears to be a bit, well, off. “After watching our team prepare and watching our team play, I have one perspective about our team because I’m with them every day,” Mitchell said. “The other coaches in the league think that we are the 11th-best team in the league. As you develop with the team and you develop a relationship with the players, that might upset me more than it did earlier in the season before I knew they were going to come to work every day and have a great energy and a great spirit and really lay it on the line. “We may still be the 11th-best team, I don’t know. I don’t think we are. I don’t want our players to think they are. If that gives our players any motivation that the coaches in our league don’t think we’re any better than 11th, we’ll try to use that. Right now we’ll use whatever we can use to get wins because it’s just so tough to get wins and there are a certain number of wins that we’ll need to get, so we’ll continue to fight and claw for each one.”Kentucky has earned respect with its non-conference opponents. Clawing for respect in conference play begins Thursday at 7 p.m.