Hard Work Yielding More Fun for UK
The word “grind” has become the go-to descriptor for how teams and players prepare to be at their best, but it’s a bit of a misnomer. Those players, after all, are playing a game.
For the Kentucky women’s basketball team, the term was a little more appropriate.
For more than six weeks, the Wildcats reaped little reward on the court for their hard work. The losses piled up – eight straight and 10 in 11 tries – but the grind continued.
“Well you know the physical effort has always been pretty steady and pretty good to their credit,” Mitchell said. “We haven’t had a lot of just laziness going on in practice. It was more just a mindset of kind of getting beaten down and not believing in yourself and feeling like things were happening to you and so that has been the biggest challenge.”
The last week has offered a reprieve.
“You have to believe that it’s a lot more fun to come to practice after you’ve put a couple wins together,” Mitchell said.
The work has been rewarded in the form of not only two wins, but two outstanding performances. The Cats have scored back-to-back dominating Southeastern Conference victories over the last week, injecting some much-needed confidence and fun.
In the wake of a home win over Alabama and a road win Arkansas, the grind has eased. The work will not.
“We have, I think, tried to stay really focused on what we need to do to improve as a team,” Mitchell said. “So, from my standpoint right now and the coaches standpoint, we still go into practice with a pretty clear message of we need to get better today because we’re certainly not a finished product and there’s a lot to improve.”
The Cats’ next opportunity to showcase their improvement will come Thursday night, when UK (11-11, 3-5 SEC) return to Memorial Coliseum to host Auburn (11-9, 2-6 SEC) at 7 p.m.
“Well, we have a big challenge ahead tomorrow night,” Mitchell said. “Auburn is a team that plays so incredibly hard. They’ll pressure you for 40 minutes. So, we’re in for a real battle tomorrow night and huge opportunity for us to see where we are in our effort and our energy because Auburn brings that for 40 minutes and they’re very disruptive.”
That disruptiveness has led to an average of 23.9 turnovers forced per game and a turnover margin of plus-7.8, totals that lead the SEC and rank fifth and sixth nationally. In winning its last two games, UK has committed just 24 combined turnovers.
“The key to this game is if you can take care of the ball and attack and be real aggressive and tough, you have a chance to win,” Mitchell said. “It’s easier to sit up here and talk about than it is do. They’re so prolific at forcing turnovers and that’s been a real key here in the last couple of games of trying to take care of the ball and win that turnover battle.”
More generally, Mitchell says Thursday’s game will be determined by effort. If the Cats can win that battle, more fun is likely in the offing.
“It’ll be a big challenge for us, but we’ll have some real satisfaction if we can walk off the court and say we played harder than Auburn, because they play so hard. And that’s what we need to do tomorrow night and see if we can earn a victory.”
