UK’s star finds her offense, fuels rout of Stetson in front of ex-Cat Maci Morris
University of Kentucky women’s basketball star Rhyne Howard struggled to find her offensive footing in the Wildcats’ first two wins of the season. Judging by her performance Wednesday, the search is over.
Howard came out on fire, scoring 12 of UK’s 13 first-quarter points on her way to a game-high 24 as the 13th-ranked Wildcats dominated Stetson 67-48 in Memorial Coliseum.
After Howard hit just four of 16 shots in UK’s season-opening win over Mount St. Mary’s and scored nine points on 2-for-10 shooting in Sunday’s victory at Middle Tennessee, Wednesday’s plan appeared to be to get her on track early. It worked like a charm.
“I thought she was much more focused (early on),” Kentucky Coach Matthew Mitchell said of Howard’s quick start. “We tried to move her around a little bit and be intentional about where we got her shots or her opportunities early on. But I think it was really her. (She) was just on a mission tonight. You could see she had a lot of juice in her cuts ... I thought it was an attack mentality from the first possession.”
Howard scored the first points of the game, curling off a screen and nailing a pull-up jumper in the middle of the lane. She drilled a three-pointer from the wing two possessions later to put the Cats up 5-0.
View the box score from Kentucky’s win.
When Stetson (1-1) pulled within 10 points late in the the second quarter, Mitchell dialed up another screen play for Howard off an inbounds pass and she hit nothing but net. Kentucky (3-0) took a 32-20 lead into halftime.
Howard got to 20 points on another jumper in the lane off a nifty no-look pass from Jaida Roper in the third quarter, pushing the lead to 40-22. Roper smiled at Howard and stuck out her tongue as she backpedaled down court after the play.
After Stetson used an 11-4 run to pull within 12 in the fourth quarter, Howard got position on her defender and muscled in a layup. She stole the ball and started a fast-break on the ensuing possession, which Sabrina Haines finished with a layup through contact.
Howard hit 11 of 21 shots and added five rebounds. KeKe McKinney had a double-double with 10 points and 10 rebounds along with two blocks. The Wildcats held the Hatters to 37-percent shooting and forced 24 turnovers.
Mitchell called McKinney “the glue that’s holding everything together on the defensive end.”
“She’s playing her guts out,” he said. “And (she’s doing) a lot of the stuff that’s not on the stat sheet. She’s doing a great job taking away the high post and denying that or denying the reversal pass that keeps the ball on one side of the floor. A lot of the little things she’s doing. Real proud of her effort. She’s getting after it on the defensive end.”
It was far from a flawless game for the Cats. UK shot just 35 percent from the field, including 4-of-24 from three-point range. Remove Howard’s numbers and the rest of the Wildcats combined to hit just 15 of 53 shots.
“There’s some things that we need to do that, offensively, we can really improve. We’re rushing some shots around the basket and not playing with a lot of poise in the lane,” Mitchell said. “Some of those open jumpers I thought were good looks and didn’t go in. It’s the layups and the shots in the paint that are off balance; and those are the things that we’ll go about correcting.
“I’ll tell you, we’ve worked hard at shooting. We’ve spent a lot of time and we know that this is a good-shooting team ... The three-point percentage is really low right now and I just don’t think there’s any way in the world it can stay low. This is a good three-point shooting team. We’re going to hit our stride here before long.”
Ex-Cat Morris back in town
Former UK star Maci Morris was in the crowd for Wednesday night’s victory. The Pineville native, who graduated after last season as Kentucky’s No. 6 all-time scorer, is on a one-week break from her professional career in Italy’s Serie-A1 League, where she is the leading scorer for USE Scotti Empoli.
Morris said it’s great to be back in the Bluegrass after more than a month overseas.
“It’s awesome being back home,” she told the Herald-Leader before the game. “I’ve missed everybody so much. The language barrier over there has made it pretty hard to communicate with people. So being back home and seeing some of my closest friends has been so great.”
Morris is averaging a team-high 14.3 points per game along with 5.7 rebounds and 1.5 assists for Empoli, which is off to a 3-3 start after going 4-16 last year and finishing ninth in its 12-team division.
Next game
No. 13 Kentucky at Virginia
When: 5 p.m. Saturday
Live video broadcast: ACC Extra (online only)
This story was originally published November 13, 2019 at 9:17 PM.
