Kentucky Travels to Streaking Missouri for Monday Night Tilt

Mitchell Knows Wildcats Must Bring Their Best Against Missouri

“Well, we are heavy into preparation for Missouri. They are a very good basketball team. We did some really good things against them here in Lexington to earn the victory, but I think they are much improved and I think that we are much improved. It is always tough to go on the road. They are well coached and really play hard and have a lot of weapons. It will be a real test for us. We have to work hard and prepare and see if we can earn what would be a fantastic victory if we can get it.” 

“I thought they looked good the night we won, we were very fortunate to win because they could’ve won the game. They just lost some real heartbreakers. They lost to us by two and they have lost some other real close ones, but they just play real together. They play very together, they play really hard. They have a lot of different ways (to put pressure on you). They have a good inside game. They have lots of ways they can stretch you and make perimeter shots. They have a lot of offensive weapons and defensively another thing is they try to scheme you and make you take shots they want you to take and not the shots you want to take. You have to be real patient and make sure you are taking good shots. They look like they are making progress in the way that they play and their style of play. They look really good right now.”

“We think so and we hope so. The one thing that I found out about the flu is that we all get flu shots and then even if you get the flu, it helps lessen the severity. We are optimistic for her return, we think she will be back.” 

“We are trying to progress her towards Monday. We would love to have her available Monday. The next step for her in contact, so we have gone through non-contact. So tomorrow morning when we take the floor, she will be out there. She has looked really good.”

“Yeah, that will be tough. There is no possibility that she is in tip-top shape with all the time she has missed. But she is a pretty fit kid just when she showed up. The tri-deltas got her into shape last year. They have a very rigorous training program there apparently. I think she will get it back relatively quickly, but she is not in tip-top shape right now.” 

“Well, that was a great, great game for us at that time of the season because we were trying to bring the team together on all the big, big issues and trying to get better, but you have to pay attention to late-game situations. Since that night, we have worked on that and its been a good learning tool for us. We have worked on those things and have handled the press (better). They pressed us there at the end and we turned it over and made some poor decisions. I think we are improved on that. That was a good night for us, we learned a lot from the end of that game. We had a 12-point lead with 1:45 to go and almost threw it all away. We learned a lot from that.” 

“Well, Jaida has progressed a lot just mentally trying to understand how hard she had to go. I think she was just showing up and like hey these things have worked every day of my life why aren’t they working now. So you go through this, it’s almost like a period of grief, you feel bad and sorry for yourself because the stuff you did in high school doesn’t work now in the SEC. Once she got done and understood what she had to do and how hard she had to bring it every day that gave her immense room for improvement once she got her mind right. And then she has just worked out extra and worked hard. Our strength coach, John Spurlock, has really done a good job of helping her get out of her starts and stops to make her quicker. She has worked hard at that and we have tried to pay attention to that here in our practice sessions. So it is just part mental and part physical. She has tremendous confidence in her ability, which is sometimes a double-edged sword. Sometimes that gets her in trouble, she tries to make plays that she is not quite ready to make, but sometimes she makes some plays that I don’t think she is ready to make but she goes to make them anyway. That little edge that you have is a blessing for her right now, but you have to make sure you keep that in the proper perspective and make the simple play. She needs to give us minutes where it is productive and the assists are high and the shots are made and people are giving her wide-open shots and she is knocking those down. She has got to play better on defense. Last night, we got in some situations where we can really teach her and help her defensively. She has really contributing great and has got a lot better during the conference partition of our schedule.” 

“Well, there is always a chance for you to do anything to get your mind distracted and divided. So as a coach, you try to put some fundamentals down in the program about how you approach life. We talked about it last night before we took the floor. That was a really tough game for us last night with Makenzie out and people had to standup and be counted. The way that we have gotten better is we have been really committed to our fundamentals and the way that we have practiced and consistency and dependability and those things are valued in life. And all of us in our life, if we are consistent with positive performances and dependable then we have a chance of success. If you get bored of the routine and grow weary of the fundamentals then you start to lose your success. That is my message to them. They understand that we are at the halfway point and we start the other half of our SEC schedule and its Missouri, who we were two points better than. I don’t know how you can go over there and somehow think you are going to be appointed the winner just for showing up. That will be my conversation to them and for the most part they seem to be able to handle things. There is always a possibility of people doing those sorts of things and we need to make sure we don’t because it is a really, really difficult road game for us tomorrow night.”