With season winding down, UK women turn focus to defense

After nearly a decade of stressing defense, defense, defense, this was the season Kentucky opted to focus on offense.

The Cats wanted to get better at ball movement, at taking better shots, at increasing assists totals and shooting percentages.

All of that has happened.

But as it turns out, defense is the thing the No. 18 Cats can’t stop talking about with four games left in the regular season, starting with a trip to No. 14 Mississippi State for a game Thursday night.

“The biggest change in what we’ve been doing is our focus defensively,” senior Janee Thompson said. “That has to be our focus every game.”

The numbers more than explain why: In Kentucky’s 17 wins this season, opponents are averaging 53.4 points a game. In Kentucky’s six losses, opponents are averaging 74.3 points a game.

In four of those six losses it’s been an effort thing, UK’s coaches and players said.

“We were losing games — the Florida game — not to take anything away from Florida because they were outstanding — but we did not hustle on defense in that game, and they did not see our best defensive effort,” Coach Matthew Mitchell said. “The (first) Vanderbilt game they didn’t see it; the first Auburn game, against Ole Miss.”

The outliers are the South Carolina losses, in which Mitchell said there was respectable defensive effort. But he wants to see that effort all the time, especially in the last four regular-season games.

“Hopefully we won’t show up with any more poor defensive efforts, because if we do it is going to shorten our opportunities and we just can’t do that right now,” he said. “We will focus a lot of defensive intensity and working to get better there. It is an ongoing process.”

When the defense’s effort is off, it’s clear. The six times the Cats were beaten this season, opponents shot 45.1 percent from the field and 31.5 percent from three-point range.

In the UK victories, opponents shot just 34 percent from the field and 27.8 percent from long distance.

When Kentucky (17-6, 6-6 Southeastern Conference) is victorious, it’s averaging four more turnovers a game than it does in losses.

“It took some of our younger players a while to understand the level of intensity you have to play with all the time,” Thompson said. “There is no resting. There isn’t a second you can’t always be on fire, talking to the next person. I think we’re starting to understand that.”

There have been many meetings and much locker room chatter about making defensive progress.

Thompson saw it in the Vanderbilt game Sunday. Players are worrying less about perfection and more about the next possession.

She’s hopeful she’ll continue to see it against a Bulldogs team (21-5, 8-4) that has won four of its past five games and is 13-1 at Humphrey Coliseum this season.

“We’re going to make some mistakes, and that’s OK,” Thompson said. “We can’t get down. (Mitchell) doesn’t expect us to be mistake-free. We’re human. We’re going to make some mistakes, but as long as we play hard and hustle through them, we’ll get the results we want in any game.”

Notes

▪  Thompson will be UK’s lone senior on Senior Night on Feb. 25. Ivana Jakubcova will seek a medical redshirt and be back next season, a UK official confirmed Wednesday.

▪  Kentucky was a flex game at the end of the season at Texas A&M. This week it was announced the Cats will play the Aggies at 4 p.m. on ESPN for that Feb. 28 regular-season finale.

This story was originally published February 17, 2016 at 7:27 PM with the headline "With season winding down, UK women turn focus to defense."