It wasn’t supposed to end this way, not for the winningest senior class in school history.Kentucky was supposed to make a deep run in the NCAA Tournament and send Bria Goss, Jennifer O’Neill, Jelleah Sidney and Azia Bishop off in style.It wouldn’t happen that way.”A disappointing end to a season that I will always remember,” Matthew Mitchell said.Instead of moving on to Albany, N.Y., and a possible Sweet 16 matchup with rival Louisville, the Wildcats (24-10) saw their season end on their home floor with a 99-94 loss to Dayton. The seventh-seeded Flyers built an early nine-point lead, but UK battled back to go up five with less than nine minutes remaining behind Makayla Epps, who scored 29 points.From there it was a seesaw battle, with Dayton burying a pair of 3-pointers in the final 1:08. The shots by Kelley Austria and Amber Deane both broke ties, with Deane’s serving as the go-ahead basket. It came with the shot clock running down and O’Neill guarding her with 24 seconds remaining.”Personally it’s tough for me just because I’m the one that really lost the game,” O’Neill said. “I let her hit that 3-point shot. That’s deflating to my team. We were on a little run and as a senior I can’t make mistakes like that.”Of course, O’Neill – who scored 16 points – was far from the only player who played a role in the defeat. Dayton shot 56.6 percent from the field and 11 of 18 from 3-point range, numbers that ballooned to 64 percent and 5 of 8 after halftime.The defense that’s locked down over the last three weeks returned to the form that appeared too often prior to a meeting the four seniors called with Mitchell on Feb. 24.”It’s just plagued us all year: inconsistency at inopportune moments,” Mitchell said. “I could really kind of tell it from the beginning. There’s just certain things that you can notice from players and we just did not have the focus and the energy and the effort that we needed.”The lack of energy ultimately spelled the end for those seniors. Goss and O’Neill appeared alongside Mitchell at the postgame press conference visibly emotional and Goss had trouble composing herself when asked about playing her final game.”It’s just going to be tough,” Goss said before taking a long pause and asking for the next question.Bishop did not play in the game, serving a one-game suspension for a “failure to uphold team standards” on Friday night related to the team’s 11 p.m. curfew. “I hate that that was the way her career ended,” Mitchell said. “I really wanted to get to next week because I know she feels terrible about the situation. I feel terrible about the situation. But if you’re in my shoes, you must do the right thing or if you don’t have integrity you don’t really have a program.”With Bishop, UK’s top post presence, sidelined, the Cats were outrebounded 42-34. Mitchell didn’t know whether her presence would have changed the outcome, but that doesn’t much matter to him.”I can tell you,” Mitchell said, “if she’d played and whether we’d lost or won the game, I think we’d have lost a bunch in the future if I don’t uphold the standard.”What makes that so difficult is Bishop and her fellow seniors were the ones who helped reestablish that standard in calling that meeting and lifting UK to a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They won’t get to be there as the Cats look to build on that foundation next season, but the role they played won’t be forgotten.”A disappointing end to a season that I will always remember,” Mitchell said. “And I’m real grateful to our seniors. They had a great career here and what they did for us down the stretch to help us know what we need to know what we need to do going forward I’ll always remember.”