Women’s basketball head coach Matthew Mitchell participated in a teleconference Monday to preview the Southeastern Conference Tournament in Duluth, Ga., which starts on Thursday.UK will begin its tournament run Friday at 2:30 p.m. against the winner of Thursday’s Auburn-Florida matchup. The Cats are scheduled to leave for Duluth on Tuesday.See what Mitchell had to say about his team and the SEC Tournament before UK departs for the postseason: On the SEC Tournament …“We are proud of our players and proud of our team for being able to earn the second seed in the conference tournament. One thing we are real grateful of is being able to play in this conference. We just think it’s a real honor to play in the Southeastern Conference and one of my absolute favorite things as a coach is to go to the Southeastern Conference Tournament. I think it’s one of the toughest tournaments in the country to win. You’re going to have to play very, very good basketball over consecutive days to be the champion. We’re excited about the opportunity to be able to go down there and compete.”
On the year junior guard Carly Morrow has had …“Carly has had a tremendous year for us. The one thing about Carly is she has improved so much from her freshman year now to her junior year that it really makes you root for her. She’s done a great job, has worked hard and for most of the conference season, when we got in a tight spot and needed a big shot, she was able to make those. Her improvement on the defensive end really led to us being able to play probably some of the best pressure defense the conference has seen this season. She’s had a tremendous year. She’s the kind of person we want in our program. She’s an incredible student, she works hard, she is great out in the community, so we are really fortunate to have Carly Morrow on our team.”
On Morrow expanding her game … “She’s expanded her game. The hard work she’s put in and the improvement she’s made as a player far exceeds her being a one-dimensional type player. She is one of our best defenders, she’s expanded her offensive game, and that’s come through a lot of hard work and dedication on her part. We’re really happy with Carly.”
On Victoria Dunlap being an SEC Player of the Year candidate …“She has had an outstanding year. The thing that makes her so valuable to us is her versatility on defense. I think that’s where if I look around the conference and see players that have made an impact and try to compare them to Victoria, the place where I think Victoria is so strong is her versatility on defense. She is one of the few players that can guard just about every position on the court and do it fairly effectively. That kind of versatility allows your team to do some things defensively that for us have been effective. When your best player is your best defender, I think that also helps your team its identity and it motivates the other players to play extremely hard on the defensive end. That’s her value to our team. “As people are looking at her for that individual award of being the Player of the Year, I think another thing that probably jumps out to people is the improvement on the offensive end. She’s just really been able to transform her game from a defender, rebounder and athlete to a person who can score and do it at a high level and take over a game offensively. That’s something she couldn’t do in her first two years at Kentucky. She’s made tremendous improvement and has certainly been valuable to our team. We wouldn’t be in a position we’re in now without her. It’d be hard for me to find anything bad to say about Victoria Dunlap. We’re awfully proud to have her playing for us.”
On how concerned he is about heading into the tournament on two straight losses …“It’s concerning, I can tell you that. We are concerned about it. I did not think we answered the challenge at Tennessee very well. I didn’t feel like we went down there and played the way I had expected us to play. Then Sunday was very disappointing that Auburn played harder than we played, and that’s a credit to them. They played with tremendous effort and energy there on that last day of the season. That’s what you want your team to do every time out and when they don’t do that it’s concerning.
“One good thing for our players is fortunately they’ve worked hard enough to earn themselves a bye in this tournament and we’re trying to take advantage of that giving them a couple of days off and seeing if we can recharge. Our team had a tremendous challenge. We had to go eight straight weekends playing. Our bye game was the first playing date. That was a tremendous test for our team to be able to go through eight straight SEC weekends of playing without a break. Hopefully these two days will be of benefit to us. Those two losses definitely concern us but this team has been pretty resilient. We’ll certainly try to get as prepared as we can to play well in the SEC Tournament.”
On what it takes for each team to get through the tournament …“I think that matchups are interesting in this tournament. I think that some teams match up better than others. I think that is going to be what wins out here. The teams that have tremendous size really give us a lot of problems. Tennessee obviously overwhelmed us with their ability to be physical and their height really bothered us around the rim. Auburn yesterday, (Keke) Carrier really just bothered us being able to finish around the rim. You have other teams that you might catch that are similar in size that you feel like you match up a little bit better. I think, for Kentucky, it’s all about what teams advance through and what matchups we can get. For everyone else, I would suspect that they would feel the same way.
“As you see that logjam there with all those teams at 9-7, everybody has kind of had different levels of success with different teams. Tennessee is clearly the team to beat. They are talented, they’re big, they’re powerful and when they are playing at their top level, they are one of the most formidable teams in the country, let alone our conference. It is an evenly balanced tournament and I think it will be very exciting and fun to watch.”
