The ‘X-factor’ for Elzy’s Cats believes summer of toil will yield winter of success

The hope entering last season for the Kentucky women’s basketball team was that Utah transfer Dre’una Edwards would fill a persistently vexing void for the Wildcats — by becoming a reliable front-court scorer.

It was a lot to ask of the 2018-19 Pac-12 Freshman of the Year. Last season, the 6-foot-2 Edwards was returning from not one, but two significant surgeries.

One repaired a torn ACL.

The second addressed a torn shoulder labrum.

Yet defying what one might expect from a player just back from multiple surgeries plus a redshirt season, Edwards got off to a blazing start for Kentucky.

In UK’s eight non-league games last year — including matchups against major-conference foes DePaul, Indiana and Kansas State — Edwards produced four double-doubles, averaged 15.9 points and 8.6 rebounds and shot 59.3 percent.

The Las Vegas product looked every bit like the player who could help Rhyne Howard take Kyra Elzy’s Cats to the proverbial next level.

“I think I did amazing,” Edwards says of last year’s burst from the gates. “But this year, I’m looking to do that more throughout the whole season.”

Once SEC play began last year, the joy ride ground to a halt for Edwards.

In 15 regular-season SEC contests, she averaged 7.0 points, 4.9 rebounds and made 38.5 percent of her shots.

After she committed six turnovers in 18 minutes of playing time at Texas A&M in UK’s third league game, Elzy removed the forward from the Kentucky starting lineup.

“I think it was more of a confidence thing,” Edwards says of her SEC struggles. “When Coach Elzy took me out of the lineup, I knew it was for a good reason. She told me, ‘Your head is not in it right now. We are going to switch the lineup and see if that will help get you going.’”

Though the Pac-12 and the SEC are, arguably, the two best women’s college basketball conferences, Edwards says the switch from the former to the latter was more of a change than she had expected.

“The pace is different from the Pac-12 to the SEC,” she says. “The Pac-12, I feel like everything is more strategic and strategized and footwork. The SEC, everybody is dawgs, everybody is going. It’s a fast-paced game the whole entire game.”

In retrospect, Edwards (9.7 ppg, 6.1 rpg, 46.4-percent field goal shooting overall in 2020-21) drew a lesson of self-reliance from last year’s up, then down season.

“I just have to get myself out of that funk,” she said. “It took me a minute. But I am back.”

This season, if Kentucky is going to make a deep run into March Madness in what will be UK’s final campaign with two-time reigning SEC Player of the Year Howard in its program, Edwards remains the Cats’ “X-factor.”

It will be a different Dre’una Edwards wearing No. 44 for Kentucky this season.

When she went home last summer to Las Vegas, Edwards says her family challenged her to make a greater commitment to her conditioning.

“At first, I was like, ‘Nah, you all are trippin’,’” Edwards says. “Then I realized, ‘Dang, you do need to put some work in. I’ve only got a couple of years left. And I want to win a (champion)‘ship.’”

So Edwards hired a personal trainer. She then committed to doing some kind of physical exertion every day.

“Something just clicked in me and I am like, ‘I will do whatever I’ve got to do,’” she says. “I was losing a lot of weight.”

While she was working on her conditioning in Vegas, Wesley Reed, one of Edwards’ AAU basketball coaches, implored her to redirect her mental approach.

Reed instructed Edwards to stop looking toward the UK bench anytime she made a mistake.

“He was basically saying I was complaining about nothing because I have (my fate) in my hands, the ball is in my court, just go play,” Edwards said.

It hit Edwards hard when Reed, a former UNLV men’s hoops player (1994-96), died Aug. 24 from COVID-19 complications.

He was 48.

“That’s my guy,” Edwards says. “I am going to get to a Final Four for him. You heard it first.”

The results of Edwards’ off-season transformation have encouraged the UK camp. “Dre Edwards had a phenomenal summer,” Elzy says. “She’s lost about 20 pounds, she is in the best shape of her life (and) playing with a lot of confidence.”

No. 13 Kentucky’s chances of sending Howard out with a March run to remember may again depend on whether Edwards can become the consistent front-court threat for which the Wildcats are perennially searching.

“I wouldn’t necessarily say (I feel) pressure,” Edwards says. “I like the intensity. I like being the dawg of the team. We can go and go far.”

This story was originally published November 8, 2021 at 7:00 AM.

Mark Story

Lexington Herald-Leader

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Mark Story has worked in the Lexington Herald-Leader sports department since Aug. 27, 1990, and has been a Herald-Leader sports columnist since 2001. I have covered every Kentucky-Louisville football game since 1994, every UK-U of L basketball game but three since 1996-97 and every Kentucky Derby since 1994. Support my work with a digital subscription