Opening statement … 

“So proud of our team. What an important victory for us and every one of those in this league is a good win and a great win for us tonight. Huge second quarter for us obviously really turned the game around and helped us make enough plays to win. You have to credit Missouri. They’re well-coached, play really hard, never stopped fighting and made it really, really tough at the end, so a lot of credit goes to them. Real proud of our team under difficult circumstances and just happy to get the victory.” 

On the importance of Epps’ 3 at the end of the first quarter … 

“I think it probably gave her a lift, which was important. We needed her to play better than she had been playing and she sure did tonight. She got back to doing some things that make her a special player. Really pleased that she played better defense tonight than she has in a long time with some energy and effort. It was good. I thought (Paige) Poffenberger’s 3 kind of settled everyone down. We just allowed them to play us like we were incapable players. We literally had 10 wide-open shots that no one wanted to take and I thought we let our confidence plummet too quickly. I thought once one went in and it really seemed like that got the lid off the (basket). Then it was a blitz there in the second quarter. Credit the players for coming back. Down seven after that debacle in the first quarter probably felt better than a double-digit (margin) so it was a big lift in a lot of ways.”

On what’s going through his mind after the first quarter … 

“Well, you’re just trying to coach them through that. We are just a really good group of kids who work really hard, but we let our confidence get shaken much, much too easily. We’ve got to improve that, so I tried to stick with them and show them how you can’t allow someone to guard you that way. I mean it was incredible. They had all five people within 10 feet of the basket and they weren’t going to let us score from 10 feet and in. They were going to let us make some 3s and then when one went in, we started making some. Every time we’ve had some success this year, it seems like we’ve made more than five or six 3s. We certainly had too tonight because they just were not letting us get to the rim.” 

On what he was telling the team in the late-game situations … 

“I just kept trying to tell them that the clock is on your side if we can just make some plays. And then if you don’t – like if for some reason, they make a great play and steal the ball or something – then time is still on your side as long as you don’t let them make 3s. We had varying degrees of success with that. They did a beautiful job of making it too big of a margin for Missouri to come back – it was just too big of a margin. Evelyn (Akhator) made a huge and-one play and got it out there to 12 (points) and the end of the game – people have been banged up, it’s been difficult to practice, coming back off of the holiday we haven’t had a large volume of practices. We’re trying to get our defense sharpened up – which I thought we did a pretty good job of at times on that and we just have a lot of people in late-game situations who are not used to being there and we just made some mistakes. On me, we haven’t practiced enough. Like Taylor (Murray) went to the dead corner and she never normally does that. She’s a great player and that’s something she wouldn’t normally do. So we have to do some reps there in late-game situations and do a better job. Give our kids credit, they built a lead that was too hard to come back.” 

On the status of Jessica Hardin’s concussion … 

“She’s struggling right now, so it’s day-to-day. She was not feeling well today – not well enough to attend the game – so we’ll do everything we can to get her back. I was just so pleased with the freshman. We got 25 minutes out of them. That’s tremendous and a reason we were able to win the ball game. They did some great things out there, so good for the freshman.” 

On what Makayla Epps did well tonight … 

“She got into the lane, she got into the paint, she made some of those very short jumpers that are sometimes very difficult to make. Sometimes, a six- or seven-foot jumper is harder to make than a 15-footer or a 3 because you’re so close to the goal and you’ve got to have some touches. We’ve worked really hard the last three days coming back from Tennessee on trying to get her mentally to understand they might not let you lay it up, but you still have to probe deep enough to where it’s a close shot. And then she got a steal tonight on defense, boxed out and just played with more energy. You saw her smile tonight and have some fun out there and that’s what we’ve got to get back to doing with her. She’s got to be our emotional leader and so she can’t be down in the dumps and frustrated. So as coaches, we’ve really tried to help her with that because defenses aren’t letting her get to the rim. She’s so strong and she was able to make some plays around the bucket and that was really good for us.” 

On the confidence issue facing his team … 

“It’s not like they are weaklings and they don’t believe in themselves. They just want to do so well that when something goes wrong, I feel like it effects them too much. I feel like they need to steady themselves a little bit and bounce back and have a little resilience. That’s one thing we’re trying to teach in the program. If you’re first shot doesn’t go down, just understand the next time don’t pass up a shot because your last shot doesn’t go in. Concentrate on your footwork, step in there and make a shot and just play really, really tough and strong. It’s a product of wanting to do well, it’s not a product of not believing, they just get too focused on what they do wrong and we’re going to need to bounce back a little quicker than what we do right now.”

On the importance of her shot at the end of the first quarter …

“I feel personally I struggled against Duke and I struggled against Tennessee. Two big teams, two big stages, games that the team needed me to play well. I just wanted to get my legs back under me, go out here and have some fun, get to smiling, bouncing around like I’m used to doing. To start the game, I was shooting the ball and it wasn’t going in, but I was still shooting it. So I knew it was an early game, early start. Missed a couple shots early, nobody’s hurt off that. And just to hit a shot like that, Coach always says big-time players make big-time plays and that was just a shot at the end of the quarter. I think my teammates—my teammates believe in me I think sometimes more than I believe in myself. If I’m down on myself, they’re right there to pick me up and I really appreciate them for that.”

On the confidence issues Coach Mitchell spoke of … 

 “Especially because in all of our losses, we have seen why we have lost on film. It’s right there for us to see. It’s not like we are out here just wondering like the world’s against us and we’re wondering why we lose everything. Confidence is a team that this team struggles with because we all want to do so well that when we do one thing wrong, I feel like the world is against us, so definitely to get a win against a tough Missouri team and get our first SEC win is big.”

On playing all 40 minutes in the game … 

“I take pride in that. I would rather be out there 40 minutes on the floor than one minute on the bench.”

On how she’s able to manage playing a 40-minute game … 

“It’s kind of like a game of spirits. Sometimes I feel like I’m just exhausted and then the media (break) comes at a perfect time and I’m like ‘thank you’. Or somebody calls a timeout and there is a turnover or a foul and it just slows the game down, so all of those things play into it. But me catching my breath in those small moments give me the energy to push through for 40 minutes and I’ve been doing this for a couple years now, so I’m getting used to it.”

On if she’s talking to herself to have fun during games … 

“Not necessarily talking to myself to have a good time. Basketball is fun for anyone who plays it. So when we get to rippin’ and roarin’ up the court and scoring in transition, Evelyn (Akhator) is getting and-ones, Maci (Morris) is hitting 3’s, making big plays, it’s fun. I always have this smile. Me and Coach Mitchell met and he said he hasn’t seen my smile in a while and you don’t think until you go back and watch film and you’re bogged down and you get that out of the way. Then when I’m out there having a good time and I’m smiling – my smile is contagious. We smile at each other all the time on the court. We laugh and have a good time out there. I feel like it’s just an energy boost for me.”

On what they were saying in the closing stages of the game as the gap closed … 

“We have a timeout, use it. We have multiple timeouts, call them. Like I said, it’s a pressure situation. Maci and Taylor (Murray) are sophomores. We had Jaida Roper as a freshman, Makenzie Cann is just getting back to playing after a year sitting out – so, coach told them if you get trapped, call a timeout. Then we got a turnover and a jump ball – so like coach says, we’re struggling right now mentally. We’re pretty sharp off the court academically, but we’ve got to sharpen up on the court and it just takes time and reps. It’s a learning experience. I’m sure we’ll start working on late-game situations now.”

On the confidence issues Coach Mitchell spoke of … 

“I think our problem is that we just want to do so well. I know a lot of our team, especially academic-wise, they’re perfectionists. Alyssa (Rice) and Paige (Poffenberger) are perfectionists. So when they mess up, they’re not used to that so if you make one mistake it can get you down and we just have to learn to keep playing when we mess up and hopefully just learn to not mess up and learn from the mental lapses like coach is talking about, or just learn how to play through them.”

On what a game like tonight in a win can show the team … 

“It just shows that you’ve got to keep playing and just when we keep playing and try to pull out a win, we can do it. That just gives us confidence to know that.”

On Makayla Epps getting back to her old self … 

“Not only do we look up to her as the leader of this team, but we are really good friends with her. Any time we see her down, it makes us down because we don’t want her to be down. Even if she’s having a bad game, we want her to feel like we have her. We believe in her and we believe in her more than she believes in herself sometimes and we just want her to believe in herself as much as we believe in her.”

Opening statement…

“Well certainly a tough game for us but I was proud of the resiliency we had down the stretch. Certainly, that second quarter killed us. I think that offense really dictated our defense and we just played a little bit deflated. If you take that 10 minutes out, I really think that we played a really good ball game.”

On Kentucky’s play in the second quarter…

“Certainly Kentucky is a great team, Matthew does a great job. I really thought they did a really good job of taking away our penetration. We had some good looks early in the second quarter, some opportunities around the basket that we didn’t convert on. I just felt like we got deflated and really missed some shooting opportunities but I think Kentucky really locked us down in the second half and really stopped our dribble penetration.”

On the comeback at the end…

“Yeah that was fun. I was proud of our girls for that, they could have easily quit down 16 with 7 minutes to go but we talk a lot about resiliency in our program and having that fighter’s mentality, really trying to put 40 minutes together as a team and that is just the kind of kids that we have. I was really proud of them for that, they didn’t quit, they stayed the course, we had a chance there down the stretch but that second quarter really killed us.”

On what changed in the second quarter…

“I want to make sure I give credit where it is due. They are a good team with some players that play really hard and I think it was a combination of that. I think it is part on us, we had some looks you have to knock down. We had an uncontested layup in transition and we had a couple more looks around the basket. It just felt like it led to some deflation on the other end and we have to do a better job of playing in the present for 40 minutes. They got some transition buckets there, they got a couple of offensive rebounds so it was a combination of a lot of things but certainly you have to give Kentucky a lot of credit, Matthew has done a great job and they have a really great team.”