It’s time to start thinking big picture. No longer should the Kentucky women’s basketball team be satisfied with just a good showing. History has already been made with the program’s longest run in the NCAA Tournament. Headlines now splash the front pages with UK’s 76-67 toppling of No. 1 seed Nebraska.With a victory that convincing in that type of hostile setting, who is to say the UK Hoops team can’t make it to the championship game in San Antonio? (Let’s disregard talk about winning it all until Connecticut shows an inkling of vulnerability.)Other than the team’s lack of history, the Cats have not shown anything that would lead one to believe they can’t hang with the nation’s very best. Against a one-loss Nebraska team, UK was the better team from start to finish. The Cats (28-7) jumped to a 31-22 commanding lead early in the game on the back of Keyla Snowden’s three-point shooting. They never looked back.”It’s not time for us to attach meaning to or significance to this win,” UK Hoops head coach Matthew Mitchell said. “There will be time for that. What we need to do is put our energy into whatever confidence we can gain from tonight. We need to get that and take it into the next game.”This is no longer just a season-long Cinderella story. This is a powerhouse team capable of playing in the final game of the season in San Antonio. Sunday night was final proof of that.Aside from record-setting UConn, Nebraska was the best team in women’s basketball this season. The Cornhuskers cruised through Big 12 regular-season play behind All-America candidate Kelsey Griffin and didn’t suffer their first hiccup until a semifinals loss in the Big 12 Tournament. But against a smaller, quicker Kentucky team Sunday night, Nebraska was really no match. Dominique Kelley scored 22 points and Griffin played up to her accolades for spells, but an outsider with no previous knowledge of the teams would have thought UK would was the No. 1 seed. The Cats were that much better. The difference, as it has been all season long, was on the defensive end. There’s a tendency to think UK is at a disadvantage because its lack of height, but the Cats more than make up for that with speed and tenacity. They’re relentless at both ends of the floor.”You can’t overstate the importance for our team,” Mitchell said. “We are not tall. We don’t have a lot of size. We do have good, well-conditioned athletes, so that’s our whole method of playing. We have to play with quickness. We have to use the speed to our advantage.” The Cats have a penchant for coming up with every loose ball, and they continue to produce turnovers at an alarming rate. Sixteen turnovers, including 10 steals, led to 16 points, but it was more about UK’s ability to take Nebraska out of its rhythm.UK dictates the tempo. The Cats say when to run and when to hold up. When teams appear to make a run, much like Nebraska’s late flurry of threes, the Cats do what that other Kentucky team had trouble doing — they step on teams’ throats.”John Wooden used to say when he coached, if you have three players on your team that are quicker than your opponent, you have a really good chance to win,” Nebraska head coach Connie Yori said. “If you look at their lineup, they were either as quick or quicker at every position than us, and that was the difference. They got every loose ball. They chased down loose ball rebounds. They beat us to the ball.  And the collection of those plays added up to a win for them. They’re a very quick team.”Size usually matters — see Baylor’s rout of Tennessee — but UK’s speed makes it a non-factor. Teams like Nebraska know the pressure is coming, but nothing can prepare them for the relentless attack. “We watched plenty of film,” Yori said. “We knew they were quick. We tried to simulate it. You do the best you can to simulate it but (UK’s pressure) is hard to simulate.”It’s the best thing going for Kentucky as it enters the Elite Eight for the first time since 1982. Oklahoma, Tuesday night’s opponent (9 p.m. on ESPN), will game plan for the Cats’ quickness and defense, but the Sooners can’t fully prepare for what they will face on the floor.The best comparison would be former Arkansas great Nolan Richardson’s “40 Minutes of Hell,” an intense defensive system that placed emphasis on guarding the ball from baseline to baseline. Longtime Kentucky fans might liken the pressure defense to Rick Pitino’s pressing UK teams of the 1990s.”We tried to push the tempo and tried to just speed every team we play up,” said freshman guard A’dia Mathies, who finished with 21 points and three steals. “That’s part of Kentucky basketball.”The Elite Eight, made up of teams like Connecticut, Baylor, Oklahoma and Stanford, are the best of the best, but none of them have seen defensive pressure quite like Kentucky’s. Are some of the teams remaining more talented? Well, sure. One could make a case that UK sits at the bottom of the talent totem pole of the eight teams remaining. But with the type of defensive pressure Kentucky employs and the heart and effort the Cats put into every game, there’s no reason to believe they can’t make it to the championship game.”Clearly this is a special group, special team,” Mitchell said. “I love this team. But it’s not time (to celebrate) now. When the time comes, obviously this will be a significant victory.”But right now, more significant victories could still lie in the future. Right now, it’s time to start thinking big picture.