Kentucky Basketball: Cats Hang On Late, Beat Missouri

Kentucky Basketball: The women’s team lost a big lead, but held on to hold off a late Missouri charge to get the conference win in Memorial Coliseum

The Kentucky Basketball Women’s team held off a furious late charge from Missouri tonight, outlasting the Tigers 64-62 to pick up its first conference win of the season. Kentucky, coming off consecutive losses to Duke and Tennessee, struggled early, was brilliant through a big stretch of the game, then collapsed late before holding on for the win.

GAME STATS

“So proud of our team,” said head coach Matthew Mitchell. “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.”

Early on though, nothing went right for the Cats, as Kentucky managed just eight points in the entire third quarter; however, the biggest play of the game for Kentucky arguably closed out what had otherwise been a debacle. Trailing 15-5, with the clock winding down, senior Makayla Epps drilled a 3-pointer from the top of the key, giving Kentucky some life.

“I think it probably gave her a lift, which was important,” Mitchell said. “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.”

“I feel personally I struggled against Duke and I struggled against Tennessee,” Epps said. “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.”

Epps’ 3-pointer opened a floodgate for Kentucky, as the Cats went on a 29-3 run to take control of the game. And Epps’ teammates caught the fever as well, as Kentucky hit six 3-pointers in the second quarter to push the lead to 34-21 by halftime.

Epps continued to go to work, continually setting up defenders off the pick-and-roll, establishing mismatches, and getting into the lane at will. Epps lead the way with 17 points, five rebounds and five assists. Evelyn Akhator put up 14 points and eight rebounds, while Maci Morris scored 11 points.

Though Kentucky outplayed Missouri through the second and third quarters, the Tigers got on a roll late, forcing some key turnover with the press and behind some clutch 3-pointers by Sierra Michaelis, who scored 22 points and grabbed seven rebounds.

Missouri cut the lead to 60-56 with 1:15 remaining, when Epps slit a trap and push the ball up the floor before dishing to Akhator, who converted a 3-point play to push the lead back to seven with 1:07 remaining. Michaelis scored again with 25 seconds remaining to cut the lead to 63-58. But Morris would add a free throw for the Cats, and after Sophie Cunningham added four late points for the Tigers, Missouri ultimately ran out of time, as the Cats held on for a hard-fought win.

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“I just kept trying to tell them that the clock is on your side if we can just make some plays,” Mitchell said. “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.”

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