Field-goal percentage, turnovers, rebounds – that’s all good and dandy for winning championships, but there’s something about the ugly that always looks so pretty.No matter what sport we’re talking about, it always seems to be the teams that win ugly take home the top prize. Maybe it’s fitting then that Matthew Mitchell’s Cats continue to win and storm up the rankings by winning with grit. Think of them as the Southeastern Conference’s ugly ducklings. Picked to finish 11th in the conference in the preseason, UK sits just a Tennessee slipup from first place. Hard to believe? Not when you watch them play.They fight, they scrap and they hardly ever give up. On Thursday night against Georgia, a team that broke the Cats’ hearts about a month ago with a come-from-behind overtime victory, UK played far from its best game of the season.”It was sloppy at times; it was physical at times,” head coach Matthew Mitchell said.

SEC Player of the Year candidate Victoria Dunlap was just 3-of-12 from the floor, starting point guard Amber Smith was riddled in foul trouble most of the game and UK missed on 22 of its 29 3-point attempts.And yet the Cats still won, 64-48. UK, not at its best – and sometimes at its worst offensively – went toe-to-toe with a once top-five team and derailed them by 16. Oh, how far UK Hoops has come.Asked afterwards if she was surprised Kentucky shot 33.9 percent from the floor and won by double digits, Amani Franklin stared straight ahead and flat out said no.”It starts with our defense,” said Franklin, who scored 15 points Thursday in her highest point outing in nearly a month. “We might not have a good shooting night, but it starts with our defense. With our defense we get some offense.”It’s been a season-long formula that no other team has been able to crack to this point. The Cats press, they turn you over and they get steals. On Thursday they turned Georgia over 24 times, which led to 22 points.If there was a difference in an ugly slugfest, that was it.When you turn teams over that much on a nightly basis – and UK is, ranking second in the nation in turnover margin at plus-8.0 a game – it can cover up offensive ineptitude. The Cats certainly aren’t short on offensive options with Dunlap, A’dia Mathies, Amber Smith and more, but it allows a margin for error on the offensive side if they bring it every night on the end of the floor where it matters most – defense.”They earned it tonight,” Mitchell said. “They played outstanding defense, worked extremely hard defensively and were able to overcome a very poor offensive showing in the first half to grind out just a crucial victory for us.”The ability to grind out games outweighs the ability to shoot or rebound or block shots. Coaches often talk about their love of players that possess intangibles. This team has 12 of them. “On nights when you aren’t playing your best and can still come through with a win, it gets you excited as a coach,” Mitchell said.Mitchell could sense early on that it wasn’t going to come easy on the offensive end. The third-year coach paced the sidelines like his feet were on fire and yelled at the referees like they were delinquent children.With just under 10 minutes to play in the second half and the Cats clinging to an 11-point lead, Mitchell threw his coat to the bench and went ballistic at a controversial call. He apologized after the game for the way he acted and denied it creating any momentum, but there was little doubt his team fed off his energy.From there on out, the game was never in doubt. It was game, set, match – one of UK’s best wins of the season considering the heartbreak it suffered in Athens, Ga., a month ago.”It’s comforting on one level that you can grind out some games with your defense,” said Mitchell, whose team improved to 3-1 against ranked opponents. “This was a huge win just because of where we are right now. The players have continued to take advantage of an opportunity. We are in the thick of this (SEC) race.”Thursday night was probably the best indicator of how good this team has become. It indicates staying power in a conference title race with Tennessee that very well could come down to the showdown in Knoxville, Tenn., at the end of the month.We know now better than ever that UK has a legitimate shot to win that title, too, because when you can win ugly, you can win against anybody at anytime and at any level. Rarely does a team snag six straight victories in the NCAA Tournament by winning in style. More often than not, it takes two or three ugly, hard-fought wins in March to make a significant run.”When they’re playing the way they want to play, they’re very good,” Georgia head coach Andy Landers said. “They’ve been able to do that, which is a credit to them and their coaches, most of the year.”Thursday was ugly, physical and sometimes downright hard to watch. But all 6,521 raucous fans in Memorial Coliseum loved every second they saw. It was a confidence booster for a bunch of ugly ducklings who aren’t so bad after all.