Cats Have the Tools to Overcome 'Challenging Time'

It’s reached the point where Matthew Mitchell has to devote an entire portion of his pregame press conferences to running down the list of Kentucky’s injured players.

None of the injuries are long-term, but they are combining to be a major impediment for a team that wasn’t all that deep to begin with.

“It’s a challenging time right now with practice and just trying to make sure we keep everybody as healthy (as possible) while still keeping them game sharp,” Mitchell said. “And so it’s just—people go through it. You go through these kind of things in a season and we’re just in one of those spots right now.”

As No. 24/RV UK (9-5, 0-1 Southeastern Conference) prepares for its league home opener vs. Missouri (11-4, 1-0 SEC) on Thursday, the Wildcats will be without reserve Jessica Hardin due to a concussion. Taylor Murray (finger) and Makenzie Cann (broken nose) are both expected to play, but trying to keep them from further injury has made practicing difficult, as has the absence of walk-on Rachel Potter.

The Cats are finding a way though.

“I thought the team really worked hard yesterday,” Mitchell said. “I saw some real improvement people in people yesterday. So they’re working hard and that’s what we’ve gotta keep doing every day.”

Hard work never seems to be an issue for this team, even in defeat. UK has suffered two road losses in a row – to Duke and Tennessee – but the Cats continually battled in both. Mental mistakes that stemmed from confidence lost due to short-term failure proved to be the deciding factor.

“We had a legitimate chance to win both of those on the road against extremely talented teams, but we can’t do it making the mental mistakes,” Mitchell said. “So what we’re trying to tell the team is that physically they just hustle and they won’t give up but let’s don’t get into a situation where, you know, your back’s against the wall and you let these leads stretch to 12 and at Duke we weren’t able to fight back.”

Those two losses are cause for urgency, but not alarm. In spite of facing one of the nation’s toughest schedules, the Cats have more than their share of quality wins and sit at No. 17 in the latest release of the RPI.

Besides, it’s better to be facing adversity in December and January that February and March.

“So I think it’s tremendously beneficial that – you don’t want to lose these games, you want to win these games – but there’s a reason,” Mitchell said. “It’s not happening to you. You’re participating in it. You are actively involved in the result because of what you’re doing on the court. So we’ve just got to embrace the fact that we’ve got to be a smarter, sharper basketball team that’s in position because when we do that we’ll win a bunch of games.”

That starts with a tough matchup against a Missouri team coming off an impressive 63-45 win over Georgia in its home opener.

“Robin’s (Pingeton) one of the best coaches in the league,” Mitchell said. “They’ve got really good players. They can spread the floor and really give you a lot of trouble as you’re trying to defend them. Great one-two punch with (Cierra) Porter and (Lindsey) Cunningham and they just cause a lot of problems.”

UK won’t have the luxury of a full complement of players on Thursday evening in Memorial Coliseum in facing that challenge, but the show must go on.

“We are really banged up right now and we’ve gotta find a way to work our way through a challenging time here,” Mitchell said. “We’ve had some good practices here this week and we’ll try to finish up today with a good preparation and get ourselves prepared to work as hard as we can to earn a victory over Missouri.”