As she proved throughout her four-year Kentucky career, there just isn’t much that rattles A’dia Mathies.Her facial expression – no matter the circumstances – hardly changed and Matthew Mitchell said he could never quite get a handle on what she was thinking.But as the WNBA Draft moved into the latter half of the first round, Mathies admits that her normally imperturbable pulse quickened a bit.”I think I was excited so much I was just sitting on the couch and once they got up into the seven, eight, nine area, my heart started beating fast when every single pick was called,” Mathies said.Watching Monday night’s draft at her grandmother’s house in her hometown of Louisville, Ky., Mathies still wasn’t showing much emotion as she waited to hear her name called. But when the Los Angeles Sparks took her with the 10th overall pick, the same could not be said about most of her family. “My mom started jumping around,” Mathies said. “I haven’t seen her jump around like that in a while so I know she was excited.”Not only had Mathies become the highest draft pick in UK Hoops history, but she would be joining an organization that has won two WNBA titles in the league’s 17-year history and moving to the hometown of someone she has looked up to for a long time. “Pretty much everybody who thinks about the WNBA they automatically think of the Sparks,” Mathies said. “Just to be going there and my brother lives in L.A. and being with him and I miss him and I’m just very excited right now.”Johnny Mathies is a few years older than his sister and played basketball at Creighton from 2003-06. A’dia says she grew up trying to be her own player, but that her older brother was the person she most looked up to.”He knows basketball and he gives me pointers all the time, especially when I was playing at UK and things I need to work on and I think that’s really going to help me out a lot,” Mathies said. “He’s going to support me so I know I have somebody I can trust and I think it’s going to be really beneficial to have him there.”Also already helping Mathies in her transition to the professional ranks is Ukari Figgs, UK’s assistant athletics director for women’s basketball. Figgs played five years in the WNBA, including three with the Sparks, so she has a good idea of what’s in store for the second-leading scorer in Kentucky women’s basketball history.”She has just been giving me the basics right now like getting an agent and really helping me out with the draft experience since she has been through it,” Mathies said. “We will talk more about it as far as what it’s like to play out there and being a WNBA player. We have been working out a little bit and we are just going to take it step by step over the next couple of weeks.”Mathies will take any help she can get right now because of how much she has on her plate. She is slated to graduate with a degree in psychology in early May and will head west immediately after for training camp. The Sparks play their first regular-season game on May 26.”Right now (her head is) on cloud nine, but I’m going to come down very soon,” Mathies said. “Just stay grounded and humbled. I had a great workout today with the team and Coach Figgs. … It’s real great to see how everything is coming together and I’m just trying to stay focused and do everything right and try to be the best that I can.”That’s really no big change for Mathies.Just as she’ll enter the WNBA intending to do nothing but make the most out of her ability, Mathies came to UK four years looking to be the best version of herself. By doing that, Mathies became unquestionably one of the best players in the history of her soon-to-be alma mater, helping to bring the program to national prominence in the process.”It’s very humbling to see somebody like me to actually get that accomplished and just doing the things that I’ve done here,” Mathies said. “When I first came here, I never would have imagined I would be top in this and doing this and even getting drafted this high. The work that we put in as a team and individually I think it’s definitely paid off and I’m just happy and humbled that it actually happened and it’s a great time in my life and I’m very excited.”