Three takeaways from Kentucky’s stunning women’s basketball comeback vs. Mississippi State
There’s fight left in Kyra Elzy’s Kentucky Wildcats just yet.
Down 15 points with seven minutes remaining in the game, the Kentucky women’s basketball team ended Tuesday night’s home game on a 24-2 scoring run to score a stunning comeback win over the Mississippi State Bulldogs, 81-74.
A strong offensive start for senior guard Rhyne Howard was quickly halted, while Mississippi State ran clinical offense throughout the first three and a half quarters, slicing through Kentucky’s pressure and zone defenses.
But then came Kentucky’s stirring fourth-quarter comeback, led by a resilient defensive effort using a full-court press, to record UK’s first consecutive SEC wins of the season.
UK went to its “Black Trap” defense and a smaller lineup in the closing minutes.
Mississippi State turned the ball over four times in the final seven minutes, and made just one of its final 12 shots.
The victory represented UK’s largest comeback win in the final 10 minutes of a game since 2014 and tied for the 11th-largest comeback win overall in program history.
“We’ve been here before, whether it’s in practice, whether it’s been in the tough games that we’ve lost,” Elzy said of what UK team huddles in the final minutes of Tuesday’s game were like. “Now we’re going to step up. We need defensive stops. I thought they really took that to heart.”
It was just the second win of the season for Kentucky against a potential NCAA Tournament team, but one that was as unlikely as anything seen in the 72-year history of Memorial Coliseum.
Kentucky 81, Mississippi State 74
The star: Rather than an individual, Kentucky’s closing defense deserves massive credit. The Cats allowed two points in the final seven minutes to key a stunning comeback win.
The stats: Three different UK players scored in double figures, led by Dre’una Edwards with 23 points. Freshman guard Jada Walker had 17 and Rhyne Howard finished with 16.
Both Edwards and Howard finished the game with double-doubles as Howard pulled down 11 rebounds and Edwards had 10.
The status: Kentucky is now 11-11 overall and 4-8 in the SEC. Mississippi State is 15-9 and 6-6.
Three takeaways
1. UK ENDS GAME ON A 24-2 SCORING RUN.
Scoring runs like this don’t happen often in basketball, let alone in the final seven minutes of a game, let alone when a team down by 15 points is the one on the run.
But that’s what Kentucky did on Tuesday night to secure the unlikeliest of victories.
Edwards led UK with nine fourth-quarter points (including the go-ahead score with 1:17 left in the game), followed by Howard with eight in the final period, but it was defense that allowed UK to make this win a reality.
“We just leaned on each other and we pushed each other. We didn’t go out there like the game was over,” Edwards said. “We went out there like, ‘This is our game’ and we’ve got to get the dub.”
Walker, UK’s freshman guard who had 17 points, five rebounds, two assists and no turnovers in one of her best SEC showings of the season, said a Mississippi State player told the Kentucky players they couldn’t handle the pressure during Tuesday’s game.
“We flipped it back on them because they obviously couldn’t handle it tonight,” Walker said with a nod toward UK’s closing press defense.
“Her ability to guard the basketball just makes us different,” Elzy said of Walker. “You can let her play through some of her mistakes because of how hard that she plays and competes.”
UK out-rebounded Mississippi State, 17-7, in the final period.
For the game, the Cats grabbed 46 rebounds to MSU’s 31. Kentucky also had a whopping 24 offensive rebounds in the game, compared to just seven for MSU.
How did Mississippi State interim head coach Doug Novak assess his team’s play down the stretch?
“It wasn’t like we weren’t guarding (Kentucky’s offensive) actions,” Novak said. “We weren’t guarding the ball off the rim when they missed.”
2. RHYNE HOWARD SCORES EARLY, NOT TOO OFTEN, BUT GETS PLENTY OF HELP.
In the first quarter of Tuesday’s game alone, Howard had eight points, five rebounds and two assists against Mississippi State.
She then wouldn’t score for the next two quarters.
Howard finished the game shooting 4-of-19 from the field and with 16 points.
“Just continuing to do the little things like get rebounds and hustle plays to create more looks for my teammates,” Howard said about still being effective while not scoring.
“I thought the ball movement that we had for a majority of the game, we capitalized on that,” Elzy said, noting that UK committed just eight turnovers while having a 22-7 advantage in free throws made.
While Howard was held scoreless in the second and third quarters, Edwards and Walker combined for 21 of UK’s 32 points in those periods.
A common theme this season has been Kentucky’s failure to produce enough offense while Howard sat on the bench or received increased defensive attention from opponents.
That wasn’t the case against the Bulldogs, though, with Edwards and Walker combining for 40 points.
Howard now has 2,088 career points at Kentucky, and has been honored in recent weeks for surpassing the 2,000-point milestone in a late January game at Vanderbilt.
Prior to a home game against Texas A&M on Feb. 6, Howard was presented with a commemorative basketball by Elzy for scoring 2,000 career college points.
Howard was also recently surprised with a video message from Klay Thompson of the NBA’s Golden State Warriors.
In a video posted to the Kentucky women’s basketball Twitter account, Thompson — who is Howard’s favorite basketball player — congratulates a stunned Howard for her college success.
“I’m about to pass out,” a smiling Howard said as Thompson’s video message played on the Memorial Coliseum video board.
3. FINALLY, UK IS ABLE TO STRING TOGETHER CONSECUTIVE SEC WINS.
For the first time this season, UK was able to follow up an SEC win with another victory in conference play.
Kentucky’s first SEC win of the season on Jan. 6 over Georgia was followed by four straight losses.
Then, UK’s first road win of the season at Auburn on Jan. 25 was followed by four more losses in a row.
And following Sunday’s road triumph at Alabama, the Cats finally found a way to sustain momentum, although it took a furious late rally to make that happen.
“It isn’t about the team that we were in December and January, it’s about the team in February and March,” Edwards said. “I just feel like we’ve got nothing to lose. So we’re just going out there and we’re fighting and our mentality, we’re dogs now. It’s way different, it’s a better mentality overall.”
“We’ve taken a lot of hard hits this year,” Elzy said, listing injuries and a short roster as some of the things UK has persevered. “It’s going to take all of us to be successful and I love that they’re locked in, they are all in and they’re bought in for each other.”
In the postgame celebration inside the UK locker room, Elzy’s dress was reduced to a sopping mess after the UK players tossed buckets of water on her.
“I’m not concerned about the dress at all,” Elzy said with a smile when asked about what became of her in-game clothing. “Take me to the water anytime when we get victories. You can drench me any time.”
With Tuesday’s win over Mississippi State, UK has a 2-9 record this season against teams currently projected by ESPN’s Charlie Creme to make the NCAA Tournament.
UK has also finally won another home game, UK’s first win in Lexington since Jan. 6.
It will take much more than a home win over a fringe NCAA Tournament team in Mississippi State for UK to play its way into the NCAA Tournament itself, but it has to start somewhere. And somewhere was Memorial Coliseum on Tuesday night.
“That’s what we need is momentum,” Elzy said. “One game at a time.”
Up next
The third in a stretch of four games in eight days for Kentucky comes Thursday night at home against Vanderbilt. On Jan. 27, Vanderbilt defeated Kentucky, 65-57, in Nashville, although Kentucky only had six scholarship players available for that game due to injuries and suspension. The Commodores are 12-14 overall this season and 3-9 in SEC play. Vanderbilt has lost four straight games, but boasts one of the best defenders in the SEC in guard Jordyn Cambridge, who leads the conference with nearly four steals per game.
Next game
Vanderbilt at Kentucky
When: 7 p.m. Thursday
Online: SEC Network Plus
This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 8:16 PM.
