UK women have drive to dribble all summer long

By Jennifer Smith / jsmith3@herald-leader.com

Carly Morrow can text message while dribbling a basketball.

Fellow Kentucky guard Amber Smith can click to the next song on her iPod while dribbling a basketball.

Victoria Dunlap boasts that she can do all of the above and then some.

"I can text and dribble; I can eat a Hot Pocket and dribble," the junior forward said. "I can hold a camera and dribble and talk at the same time. I haven't mastered talking on the phone and dribbling and eating at the same time, but I'm working on it."

It's hard to imagine a scenario on the basketball court — short of being recruited to be a Harlem Globetrotter — that would call for any of those skills, but the UK players are confident that a summer of dribbling around campus has made them better overall players.

Coach Matthew Mitchell hopes it has made them all better Kentucky Wildcats.

Two weeks after UK ended its season at 16-16, falling in the second round of the Women's National Invitation Tournament, Mitchell had a meeting with his players.

He told them he wasn't happy with the direction of the program, with the attitudes of some players.

He worried aloud that maybe some of them were just happy to be playing at college and didn't understand how lucky they were to be wearing UK uniforms.

"I didn't think the attitude that has existed on the team would allow us to go where we were trying to go," he said. "This is a different place — a special place — and I wanted our players to understand that."

So Mitchell handed each player a blue and white ball. He gave the mandate that they were to dribble that ball around campus at all times, except inside buildings.

"We never want it to be far from their minds that they're Kentucky basketball players, and the ball is a tangible thing that reminds them," he said.

He has to be joking, the players remembered thinking.

"I didn't know if he was serious at first," Smith said. "I didn't think he was crazy necessarily; it was just kind of weird."

Senior Amani Franklin remembered walking into the meeting, seeing the balls and assuming the players would be signing them for a charity or something.

"Boy was I wrong," she said.

But once Coach explained the balls' purpose, the players knew he was serious.

"He was hammering home that the last two seasons have been unacceptable and that we're going to make a change," Morrow said.

So when classes started, the steady pounding of basketballs filled campus like the drumbeats of the UK Marching Band practicing on Stoll Field.

The dribbling will continue indefinitely, Mitchell said.

Everywhere the players go, their blue and white balls will go with them.

"When three or four of us are walking together we get a lot of looks," Morrow said.

There are also a lot of attempts to swipe the balls.

"The other athletes think it's real fun to try and take it from us," Morrow said. "You've got to constantly be on the look out."

Smith scoffed when asked if she'd ever had her ball stolen.

"They've tried," she said, "but I'm a point guard, I know how to handle the ball."

No player has misplaced her ball this summer, which makes Mitchell happy.

"They need to really protect that basketball because it's a symbol of our program and a symbol of their identity as basketball players — not just basketball players but Kentucky basketball players."

Some players have added personal touches like writing favorite quotes or their names on their balls, but the constant dribbling has caused most of that to wear off.

The once shiny white part of the balls is now a gross gray.

"Most of the color's already washed off," Smith said. "The grip's washed off, and a lot of the blue's washed off. It gets kind of brown and nasty sometimes, but then it rains and fixes that."

Smith has learned how to dribble around the bigger puddles. She's learned how to talk on the phone while dribbling to class.

Mitchell laughed when he heard about the bonus skills his players have learned from his exercise.

"If we get any kind of extra benefit from it like being able to multi-task better or being able to handle the ball better, we'll take whatever we can get," he said.

The dribbling can only help improve UK's average of 17.7 turnovers a game, second highest in the Southeastern Conference last season.

But Mitchell's also seen the change in attitude for which he was hoping.

The players have noticed it, too.

"The ball's just a constant reminder that we're here to play basketball," Smith said. "This ball has been a constant reminder that I need to get in the gym, that I need to get shots up, that I need to work on my ball handling."