Amani Franklin hopped on Twitter and Facebook after Kentucky’s win over top-seeded Nebraska on Sunday night. She looked to the top of the screen, saw the updated notifications icon and expected to see a few messages of congratulations.
She never could have expected to see 50 posts.
“Everybody is just showing us a lot of support from back home,” Franklin said. “It’s just great to hear people who usually don’t watch us are now watching us since the guys are out. Everybody is kind of watching us, so that’s great for Kentucky women’s basketball.”
The funny thing is Franklin’s account wasn’t the most popular.
“Keyla (Snowden), she had 99 messages after the game,” Franklin said. “So I came in second place.”
Junior guard Amber Smith said she had 90, but who’s counting.
Kentucky women’s basketball is on the grand stage, preparing for the biggest game in school history. Just hours removed from upsetting No. 1 seed Nebraska in the Sweet 16, UK is preparing for No. 3 seed Oklahoma (Tuesday at 9 p.m. on ESPN).
With the men’s season closed, the attention of Big Blue Nation has turned to the women’s historic run. UK Hoops head coach Matthew Mitchell has always stressed the “one game at a time” mentality, but he’s not oblivious to Tuesday’s stakes.
“It’s a big, big moment,” Mitchell said. “There’s no doubt about it. I think it’s silly to say it’s just another game. It’s not.”
A win would push the Cats into the Final Four for the first time in school annals.
“What we will try to do is get all of those things – how happy we would be to win, how sad we would be to lose – get all the consequences of the game off our mind and just focus on what we need to do,” Mitchell said. “This team has shown me they have that ability, and so I suspect they’re probably going to be able to do that one more time.”
Kentucky’s defense was spectacular in the regular season and has spilled over to the postseason. In NCAA Tournament play, UK is forcing 18.7 turnovers a game, which has generated an average of 20 points off turnovers.
Against Nebraska, UK turned the No. 1 seed’s offense upside down. The Cats limited Big 12 Player of the Year Kelsey Griffin’s touches and forced the Cornhuskers out of their half-court rhythm.
“It was our fundamentals,” Mitchell said. “It was closing out. It was putting pressure on the ball. It was denying passing lanes. It was fronting the post.”
Mitchell’s defense, although it has done it all season long, was taken notice of by some of the game’s best coaches.
“I had had some friends of mine that are coaches that aren’t playing right now, and they came in for the game, and the compliments I received were, ‘Wow, you front the post, you deny the passing lanes, you put pressure on the ball,’ ” Mitchell said.
After forcing 16 turnovers, including 10 steals, junior forward Victoria Dunlap was asked if UK had played a perfect defensive game yet. The remaining teams in the tournament might want to heed her answer.
“I don’t think we have played a perfectly complete defensive game,” said Dunlap, who finished with 18 points and seven rebounds against Nebraska. “I know we have our moments where everybody is on one tilt and everybody is moving and rotating on defense, but every now and then we just have a couple times where we’ll slip up and get penetration or just different little things.
“We definitely have a lot more room to grow and just things to get better at.”
One of the biggest improvements defensively for the Cats has come from an unlikely source. Sophomore sharpshooter Snowden has emerged in the starting lineup the last eight games to provide a stingy defensive presence.
Snowden has always had the ability to shoot, but she was pointed to the bench midway through the season against Vanderbilt because of her inability to defend, Mitchell said.
The diminutive guard took the benching to heart and refined her work ethic on the defensive end.
“I’m really proud of her because she was getting it in practice,” Mitchell said. “It was not a lot of warm and fuzzies in practice for her. It was tough every day for her to come in because I knew she had the ability. I knew she could do it.”
Coupled with her ability to shoot – Snowden is 8-of-18 from three-point range in the NCAA Tournament – Snowden has been too good to return to the bench.
“Her range is so deep, you have to respect that, and if you don’t she’s going to burn you,” Mitchell said. “It’s a remarkable thing, an example for the rest of the players, that if you just change your mindset, you can go from literally not getting in a game to, as you all are witnessing, being a significant player on the college women’s basketball’s biggest stage.”
