No. 13 Kentucky Faces Tough Road Test Sunday at Middle Tennessee
LEXINGTON, Ky. – A tough road test awaits the No. 13 University of Kentucky women’s basketball team Sunday as it travels to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to square off against the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders at 4 p.m. ET inside the Murphy Center.
The game will be streamed on ESPN+ and can be seen through WatchESPN on computers, smartphones or tablets. Darren Headrick will have the call on the UK Sports Network on 630AM WLAP in Lexington. Live stats and free live audio will be available online at UKathletics.com.
“We will have a tough test ahead of us with our first trip on the road this season against a very tough opponent and it is always a battle when we play Middle Tennessee State,” UK head coach Matthew Mitchell said. “They will be very well coached and pose a great challenge for us. We will have to prepare well and work really hard and see if we can strengthen ourselves to the best of our abilities to go down there and play a really tough early season matchup.”
Kentucky (1-0) is coming off a season-opening victory against Mount St. Mary’s on Tuesday inside Memorial Coliseum. It was not a typical shooting night for the Wildcats, who went just 22-for-66 from the field for 33.3 percent, including 6-for-22 from long range. Mitchell’s squad found a way, however, scoring 40 second-half points to grab a 67-44 victory over The Mount. It was the UK defense that shined in the opener, limiting Mount St. Mary’s to just 15 field goals made – including just five 2-point field goals – while forcing 28 turnovers and scoring 29 points off those miscues. The Wildcats also grabbed 13 second-chance points and 11 fast-break points in the win.
Sophomore guard Rhyne Howard flirted with a quadruple-double in the game, scoring a game-best 14 points with 11 rebounds, five steals and five assists. The strong performance marked the 27th time in her short UK career she has scored in double figures and was the sixth double-double of her career. Two other Wildcats scored in double figures in the game with senior guard Jaida Roper going 3-for-3 from the field and 6-for-8 from the free throw line for 13 points, adding two assists and two steals. Junior forward Tatyana Wyatt scored 10 points with five rebounds and a block in just 16 minutes of play as she continues to get full strength after a preseason injury. Senior guard Sabrina Haines and freshman guard Emma King had strong UK debuts with each going for seven points. Haines added eight rebounds and King hit two 3s. Junior forward KeKe McKinney was key for the Cats, scoring six points with seven rebounds and three blocks.
Middle Tennessee started its season with a victory over East Carolina on Wednesday, defeating ECU 68-66 in a come-from-behind effort. The Blue Raiders held two exhibition games this season, defeating Bethel University (Tenn.) 64-53 on Oct. 27 before taking down Martin Methodist 89-63 on Nov. 1. The Blue Raiders went 23-for-54 from the field in the opener for 42.6 percent while they went 9-of-26 from long range. MTSU committed 27 turnovers against ECU, allowing the Pirates to score 27 points off those miscues. Middle Tennessee did win the rebounding battle 42-41, while the Pirates had 22 offensive rebounds and 14 second-chance points.
Senior forward Charity Savage led Middle Tennessee in scoring with 16 points and 13 rebounds, while freshman forward Courtney Whitson scored 15 points with five rebounds. Sophomore guard Anastasia Hayes played 36 minutes and scored 13 points with eight rebounds and nine assists, while fellow sophomore guard Taylor Sutton was the fourth and final Blue Raider in double figures with 12 points, four rebounds and two steals.
Kentucky leads the all-time series in games played against Middle Tennessee 16-5, including a 5-4 mark in games played in Murfreesboro. The Wildcats had won two straight games at the Murphy Center against the Blue Raiders before falling 62-57 on Dec. 28, 2017. UK defeated MTSU last season 72-55 inside Memorial Coliseum and hold a 10-1 lead in the series in Lexington. The two teams have met every season 2008 with UK holding a 8-3 record during the stretch.
For more information on the Kentucky women’s basketball team, visit UKathletics.com or follow @KentuckyWBB on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
UK ATHLETICS COMMUNICATIONS AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
PRE-MIDDLE TENNESSEE PRESS CONFERENCE
NOV. 7, 2019
JOE CRAFT CENTER – LEXINGTON, KY.
KENTUCKY HEAD COACH MATTHEW MITCHELL
Opening statement…
“Well, we will have a tough test ahead of us with our first trip on the road this season against a very tough opponent and it is always a battle when we play Middle Tennessee State. They will be very well coached and pose a great challenge for us. We will have to prepare well and work really hard and see if we can strengthen ourselves to the best of our abilities to go down there and play a really tough early season matchup.”
On when you face a team every year and trying to come up with different game plans …
“Each year is different but when you do face an opponent year after year and you face someone that has been as successful as Coach Insell, there are some things that you need to be prepared for. In some ways, that can help you. You know, the personnel changes for us and for them every year slightly and some years it is more drastic than others. I think we are well aware that we are going to have to go down and play a very well-coached and talented team. They are always going to be tough on defense and give you a combination of looks that will force you to make really good plays. That is what I always think is tough. They are going to put pressure on you and try to get you to take shots you don’t want to take. There is a real mental aspect to the game. You have to be sharp mentally and stay committed to what our fundamentals are. It is hard to do early in the season when you are trying to build good habits to play in a game like this. I think it will be very challenging from a defensive standpoint of what all they will throw at us. You know it is going to be that, and then offensively, again, they have a very good 3-point shooting team, which is always very difficult to guard. They are able to spread the floor and have some really dynamic players that show a lot of versatility. It is a really good Middle Tennessee State team and has been a tough series for us and we have a lot of respect for Coach Insell and how hard they play and know it will be tough.”
On if he likes the idea of taking this team into a tough road environment this early in the season …
“It will be so beneficial for us. As a coach, I do worry that you are going into a little too much too soon here for us trying to build our team, but really when you think about these early November games and when you go out and step out on the road and challenge yourself, I think you find something out about your team. We are going to go down there and fight hard for victory but we know it will be beneficial experience for us.”
On what has stood out so far about this team …
“What I have liked about our team is that we are focusing on improvement right now and that is where we need to be. We need to be coachable right now and come into practice everyday trying to fight for improvement. We had a great, great session this morning. The players came in and had an early morning practice and just worked their tails off. We got better today and that is what I like about what happened between the exhibition and the first game. That is the theme right now is can we have three really good days of practice, a good game day practice and use every ounce of preparation we have to try to see if we can go out and play a better game on Sunday than we did this past Tuesday night. We know it is a better opponent and a bigger challenge and we will have to play better than we did Tuesday night. That is really what we are focused on right now is trying to improve.”
On if there is an area of emphasis right now …
“Defensively, we are just trying to build better habits defensively and guard the ball better. I thought that got a little bit better between the exhibition and the first game and I thought that we improved on that this morning. It is hard work to try to build a defense that we are trying to build that is high energy and disruptive and on the attack, it is not easy to do and you just have to grind in practice every day. We are trying to sharpen up our halfcourt defensive overall. Our fundamentals – we just have not built the kind of fundamentals that we need at this point. Offensively, just did not execute well but we are trying to figure that part out too and our rotations out. We hope we can execute a little bit better and that will be important because Middle Tennessee is going to make you execute.”
On how they are figuring out the rotation of players right now …
“It is hard to say right now because you have to see how players play in practice and how a player performs when she gets an opportunity in a game. But we need to settle into some combinations and get some continuity and rhythm and let a group stay on the floor and play. It is just hard to do sometimes early on due to some different issues. I like to try to teach throughout the game. So if we have something going on I might sub a player out just to get her over on the bench so it is fresh on her mind and that makes the game a little disjointed from a substitution pattern and I need to pay better attention to that. If a player is still trying to round into game shape, we try to get them out because they are playing really hard, all those different things early in the season (make it hard). And we have a lot of similar players that can be productive in similar ways. So we are trying to get everyone an opportunity, but we will work hard as a staff to see if we can get in a better rhythm and let some combinations work together and see how effective we can be.”
