Three takeaways from Kentucky’s women’s basketball exhibition win
In its lone dress rehearsal before the 2021-2022 season officially begins next week, it was smooth sailing for the Kentucky women’s basketball team.
Led by 21 points and eight rebounds from redshirt junior forward Dre’una Edwards and 17 points and four steals by star senior guard Rhyne Howard, UK cruised past NCAA Division II school Lee University, 95-51, in an exhibition game Thursday night at Memorial Coliseum.
This was the lone exhibition game for the Wildcats this season.
Here are three takeaways from Kentucky’s exhibition win.
1. KENTUCKY DISPLAYS ACTIVE, SWARMING DEFENSE
During Kentucky’s Media Day in October, head coach Kyra Elzy said she wanted her team to be more disruptive and play faster defensively, and use that to spring an up-tempo style of basketball.
That focus was on display Thursday as UK forced 29 turnovers over the 40 minutes against the Flames.
For the game, Kentucky scored 32 points off turnovers and 22 fast-break points.
UK had 15 steals, including four each from Edwards and Howard.
“Overall I liked the (defensive) intensity with which we played,” Elzy said. “I thought one thing we did well in the press (was) I thought we made them play fast early . . . we were switching today so I thought that was really disruptive to them.”
UK displayed several different styles of defensive disruption in the game, with Elzy calling for full-court pressure and backcourt traps, while also frequently imploring Kentucky players to use their length to get in passing lanes and deny passing opportunities.
Freshman guard Jada Walker also showed defensive tenacity, applying on-ball pressure at virtually every opportunity and diving on the hardwood for loose balls.
“My job is to pick up the ball, so just making sure my teammates can get on their man by picking up the person in front of them,” Walker said. “That’s my strong point: Playing defense, getting steals, getting layups and just doing whatever else my team needs me to do.”
“Her ability to pick up the basketball changes us defensively,” Elzy said of Walker.
Walker spent time shadowing Lee’s leading scorer and best offensive player, guard Haley Schubert, who finished the game with 28 points to lead the Flames.
“Defensively, I think we did a good job pressuring the ball and pushing up on defense,” Edwards added. “When we’re in press, my job is to trap the ball and stuff, so we’re moving intense on that and we have to roll up, so we were doing a good job on that.”
2. ELZY EXPERIMENTS WITH NEW LINEUPS
Whichever lineup Kyra Elzy began Thursday’s exhibition with, it was to be a new one for Kentucky.
Former guard Chasity Patterson started all 27 games for UK last season, and an expected starter for this season was lost last weekend when Blair Green ruptured her right Achilles during a closed-door scrimmage against Eastern Kentucky.
The starting lineup for Kentucky against Lee featured guards Jazmine Massengill, Emma King and Howard, as well as Edwards and center Olivia Owens in a bigger lineup that is an average of more than 6-feet and 1-inch tall.
“We took advantage of transition attack, we out-rebounded them (41-28),” Walker said. “If we could keep continuing to do that throughout the season we could be really good.”
This unit was one of four first-quarter lineups used by the Wildcats, and that starting group began each quarter for Kentucky.
All nine scholarship players on the UK roster appeared in the exhibition win.
“She played very aggressive tonight,” Elzy said of Edwards, who led UK in points (21), shots attempted (18), rebounds (eight) and tied for the team lead in steals (four). “To have a ‘4’ that can shoot the three, that can lead the break, that can switch and guard on the perimeter, it gives us a lot of versatility which is hard to guard.”
3. UK STRUGGLES FROM CHARITY STRIPE
One of the more fundamental elements that Elzy will want improvement in from Thursday’s exhibition is from the free-throw line.
UK made just nine of its 20 foul shots, or 45%, although Elzy said the team’s goal entering the exhibition was to take 20 foul shots.
“We need to shoot 80% or higher and so we were not close to that tonight,” Elzy said.
The exhibition was full of vocal teaching moments from Elzy, who could be heard yelling for players to set ball screens, shoot the ball when open and either press or recover when on defense based on the system Kentucky was playing.
Elzy and her coaching staff have just a few days to implement their desired changes with the team before the Wildcats open the regular season.
“We need to take that down from about 100 (miles per hour) to about 50 miles per hour,” Elzy said of UK’s half-court offense. “Right now I think we’re playing way too fast so we’re missing some of our assignments as far as the angle to set the screen, open looks, but we’ll continue to get better in the halfcourt offense.”
Fan reaction of the game
After each Kentucky women’s basketball game this season, Herald-Leader reporter Cameron Drummond will ask Wildcats fans on Twitter to share their reactions to the game in GIF form.
One response will be selected from the replies and included in his three takeaways from the game.
Here’s tonight’s selection:
Up next
UK will open the regular season Tuesday night with a non-conference home game against Presbyterian College of the Big South Conference. Tip-off is scheduled for 7 p.m. at Memorial Coliseum and the game will be broadcast on SEC Network Plus.
This story was originally published November 4, 2021 at 8:57 PM.
