Kentucky Breaks From Road Stretch to Host Ole Miss Thursday

The game will be broadcast on the SEC Network+ with Dick Gabriel on play-by-play and Christi Thomas as the analysts. The game can be seen through WatchESPN on computers, smartphones and tablets. Now in his 12th season, Neil Price will have the call on the UK Sports Network. Fans in Lexington can hear Price’s call of the game on WLAP 630 AM. Live stats and free audio will be available online at ukathletics.com.

Kentucky (14-6, 5-2 SEC) has won four straight games – including three road games – in conference play for its longest winning streak of the season. The stretch started with a road win at Alabama before taking down Georgia inside Memorial Coliseum. Last week, Kentucky earned back-to-back road wins at LSU and Auburn, who were both ranked inside the NCAA RPI top 25. The four-game winning streak has moved Kentucky to No. 14 in the latest NCAA RPI listing, including the third toughest strength of schedule. On Monday, the NCAA Selection Committee named Kentucky the No. 15 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament as it currently stands. The selection committee is releasing its top 16 seeds multiple times before the NCAA selection show in early March. 

Senior post Evelyn Akhator has been the spark for Kentucky during the streak, averaging 20.0 points and 12.0 rebounds per game. The native of Lagos, Nigeria has hit 71.4 percent from the field and owns 43.6 percent of the team’s rebounds in UK’s last four games. Akhator, who has been named SEC Player of the Week three times this season, recently had a stretch of three straight games with 20 or more points and 10 or more rebounds, becoming only the third player in program history to accomplish that feat. Akhator has 11 double-doubles this season and 24 for her career. 

Fellow senior guard Makayla Epps leads Kentucky in scoring by averaging 16.4 points per game. Epps, who is a member of Kentucky’s 1,000 career point club, leads the team with 76 assists and is third on the squad with 21 steals. Guard Taylor Murray has continued her strong sophomore season averaging 12.7 points while ranking second on the team with 5.1 rebounds per game. Murray has scored in double figures 12 times this season and posted her first career double-double against LSU with 11 points and a career-high 13 rebounds. Sophomore guard Maci Morris is fourth on the team with 11.5 points per game. Morris is coming off one of her best performances of the year, scoring 18 points with a career-high nine rebounds at Auburn. 

As a team, Kentucky is scoring 69.9 points per game and limiting opponents to just 59.8 points per game. UK has a +3.1 rebounding margin, +2.1 turnover margin and 1.0 turnover margin. UK is hitting 43.5 percent from the field and 30.7 percent from 3 this season, limiting opponents to 37.2 percent from the field. The Wildcats have turned up the defense as of late, limiting each of their last four opponents to 61 points or less. 

Ole Miss currently owns a 13-7 overall record including a 2-5 mark in SEC play and 0-6 record on the road. Sophomore guard Madinah Muhammad leads the team in scoring this season, averaging 12.6 points per game. Junior guard Shandricka Sessom follows close behind averaging 12.5, and junior Chrishae Rowe is the third and final Rebel in double-figure scoring, posting 10.3 per outing. Sessom also leads the team on the boards, averaging 5.6 per game. Ole Miss is averaging 70.4 points per game and holding its opponents to just 57 points, a +13.4 scoring margin. The Rebels are forcing 21.1 turnovers per game, including 10.8 steals. 

In its last game, Ole Miss was handed its first home loss of the season falling 65-57 to Alabama, snapping a 12-game win streak inside The Pavilion. Muhammad led the Rebels in the outing with 18 points on 6-of-18 shooting as well as four rebounds and four assists. In SEC play, the Rebels are averaging 63.6 points per game and hitting 40.9 percent from the field, including 26.9 percent from 3. Ole Miss is coached by Matt Insell, who has a 54-60 (.473) all-time record in his fourth season.

Thursday’s meeting with Ole Miss is the 39th all-time in program history with the Rebels leading the all-time series 22-16. Kentucky leads the series 9-8 in games played in Lexington. 

The Wildcats have won six of the last eight meetings between the two teams. Ole Miss has won each of the last two meetings in the series with the home team in the series has won each of the last four meetings. 

Ole Miss handed Kentucky its third loss of the season last year at The Pavilion at Ole Miss, 73-65. The Rebels forced Kentucky into 21 turnovers and scored 22 points off those miscues. Ole Miss hit 10 3s in the game, while the Wildcats went just 2-of-7 from the long range. Makayla Epps led Kentucky with 22 points and six assists while Evelyn Akhator had 13 points and Maci Morris had 10 points.

For more information on the Kentucky women’s basketball team, visit UKathletics.com or follow @KentuckyWBB on Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, or Kentucky Women’s Basketball on Facebook.

“Well, we’re glad to be back at home after two games on the road. But for the third game in-a-row, playing a team that can really disrupt, plays very hard, makes it tough on your offense to get into rhythm. But unlike LSU and Auburn, this is much more aggressive man-to-man. Many times they can show multiple schemes as far as disruption, but it’s just a lot of in your face man-to-man. Real, real tough. I think the backcourt is probably the most explosive that we’ve seen and they’ve got a great power game. I think Taylor Manuel is one of the most powerful post players in the league. So, real test for our team. We must prepare well. Gonna be a tough game tomorrow night.”

“Well, I don’t know how much it helps because that was so much zone. There were so many zone looks and this is a lot more unpredictable. And I think, it looks to me like there’s more quickness and speed than the other two. Not taking anything away from the other two teams, but this is a very, very quick backcourt. Deep backcourt. And so, it’s a different looks. It’s the same themes. We have to take care of the ball. We have to be patient and poised on offense. We’ve gotta rebound the ball. We’ve got to really, again, try to do a good job of keeping the ball out of the paint like we did against Auburn and LSU. But I just think there’s more overall team speed and quickness. So, it’s a big challenge.”

“Yeah, well I mean, I think if you look at the Texas A&M game, we just didn’t have a lot of enthusiasm and pop on the defensive end. We looked real worried and burdened and slow and weighted down. So, we’ve got a little more pep in our step on defense. They’re moving better. They’re more aggressive. We are helping each other out. I don’t know that we’re ever going to just be, line up and play great one-on-one defense and beat you. We’ve got to do it as a team and I think you’re seeing that. That level has been raised over the last four games and they’ve made enough plays to win. We continue to show film and continue to show areas where we can improve. So, as long as we can just constantly fight every Tuesday and every Wednesday and Thursday afternoon in practice, you hope you give yourself a chance to win on Thursday night.”

“I don’t talk to the team about it. What’s today? The 25th of January? It’s just not the time to talk about it, but I wasn’t surprised. They don’t go by rankings. They made it real clear to us a few years back, what you need to do if you want to be considered one of the best teams in the country and you want to be a team that’s in that top 16 – which is incredibly important because you get the opportunity to host – it’s not a mystery. You play a real difficult schedule and you win games. Had we won more games, we would’ve been a higher seed, but what we’ve been able to do… Your rankings have never correlated to a seed. Your ratings percentage index, for us at least, has always been very close to where we’ve been seeded. I mean, I can’t remember a time where that didn’t correlate to where we were seeded. I did not know where LSU and Auburn were in the RPI, but I knew after I was informed by our radio announcer Neil Price, who is up on those issues, I knew that was a big weekend for us. I knew that would help move us forward. But again, it’s worthless. It’s worthless in January, other than the fact that… I guess it’s not worthless. The team has done a great job through however many games we’ve played. They’re in a position where they can improve, but they’re also in a position where it can go away. So, again, we’re just trying to stay focused for our game on Thursday (and practice) on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon as hard as we can. And then Thursday afternoon, for one hour before we play, and that’s where all of our energy is going right now.”

“That’s a good point. Maybe that lets them know that they have a chance to be a good team. Again, if they’re paying too much attention to that right now on January 25th, we’re in bad shape because we’ve got to think about how in the world are we going to stay in front of these guards tomorrow night and how are we going to get enough rebounds, take care of the ball? I mean, that’s where their focus needs to be because we were 15 out of 16. We’ve got a much easier chance to slide out than we do to work our way up. So, hopefully, again if you’ve got your mind on that, in my estimation, you’re in the wrong spot. You know, ratings, rankings, that’s just never had any allure to me. It’s just never been on my mind. It’s never been anything important. We’ve never gone, ‘Hey, it’s Tuesday! We’re ranked No. 17 in country!’ We don’t make that announcement every week. We just try to focus on trying to be the best team we can be. So, I would rather be in it than out of it, I guess. It’s all good, but it has no impact on this game tomorrow night.”

“We have to shoot the ball better. You know, at times, in these games we are doing a good job of putting stress on the defense where they are forced into decisions where they are creating some wide open 3s for us or the team is choosing not to guard us from 3 and we are a good 3-point shooting team. So, we continue to work and see if we can really get that clicking. That is a big part, I think we discussed this at the preseason press conference. It is a big part of us being able to maximize our potential. We need to make some 3s and just the overall defense. We just still make too many mistakes on defense to really be the best. So , there is room for improvement. They have come many, many miles, in the last two weeks and I am very, very proud of them. They have spectacular attitudes and the way we handled that road trip and the difficulties of that. We haven’t won in Baton Rouge in a long time and jumped all over them and got a great win. We dealt with the weather and they were out of their hotel rooms and tornado drills all week and to come out and beat a time like Auburn. So, they are a great group of kids and working hard. We just can’t lose focus or we can become very average very quick. So, we just have to continue to try to improve defensively and I think offensively we are doing some good things. We just need to knock down some open shots when they present themselves.  ” 

“Jess is making progress. Great news for Jess. Yesterday she got back into non-contact in practice and that is huge. For a while, she was not even attending practice because the movement bothered her. So, she looked really good yesterday, fresh. You know, she had good explosive quickness. So now, just continue to go through the non-contact piece. I do not anticipate Thursday so then we will give you another update on Friday. I do not think she will play Thursday. I do not think Monday is out of the question now. I think maybe we can see the light at the end of the tunnel now. ” 

“Maci  is really, in the absence of some shooting which I know was frustrating to her, where she is contributed is she is guarding the other team’s best perimeter player and she is giving everything she has got there and has done a very good job with that and finding ways to impact the game, rebounding the ball. What I love is she had six turnovers at Auburn, which is not good. You wish you had half that maybe. But, virtually after every one of them she came back with an aggressive play. So, that starts to tell you about her mental growth and her emotional maturity to bounce back from adverse plays. It is, all of our guards right now, it is not like Maci can just tank and we can leave her over on the bench and let her wallow in her misery and someone can come in and take her place. Everyone has got to have a mindset of if I make a mistake, I have to let it go because the next play is up. Where, in the past, when we had a dip, maybe someone could just wave the white flag. We never wanted them to do that but there was someone who could step in and take those minutes, someone who was hungry to step in and take those minutes. So, we just have to be a really mentally tough team. What I have liked since the Texas A&M game, for the most part, we have been able to handle disappointment much better and keep it going. That is an example of Maci’s growth and we really have to do that. It will be tested tomorrow night. Just a really aggressive team, very disruptive team. So, we will have to be mentally tough tomorrow night.”

“Well, I think she and all the team, but particularly her and Makayla (Epps), again have not been burdened by whatever. We are all humans. We all have different things that push our buttons that we get concerned about or could think about or let drag us down. She just made a decision that I am going to be about the team and I am going to stress this again, there is nobody that was having a bad attitude like I am not getting enough. It was all directed toward, worried about the team preforming but it was not in a way that was helping. Everyone was focused on their problems and putting their personal stuff aside and let me just step up here and listen to the coach and just play as hard as they can and have the best attitude I can. That is just what she has done. She has really, and all the players, have had very little head hanging over the last four games and they have hustled for each other and have been enthusiastic. When you are seniors, they can be vocal in difficult times of games and I think that settles everything down. It helps us tremendously. She and Epps have both done that. ”