[SLIDESHOW] Offense struggles, but UK Hoops wins 65-55

By Nick Craddock

The UK women’s basketball team’s torrid offensive start to the season turned tepid Sunday as UK looked for a solution.

The answer was defensive intensity, and the result was a 65-55 victory over Chattanooga in front of 4,301 fans at Memorial Coliseum.

“I told them the only way we can get it going is through defensive intensity,” said UK head coach Matthew Mitchell, who saw his team facing a 39-30 deficit, the largest his team has seen this season with 15:59 remaining in the second half.

Mitchell’s team responded and held the Lady Mocs (1-3) in check by allowing them to score just 11 points in the final 10 minutes.  As a result of the energy on defense, the Cats (4-0) managed to overcome the nine-point deficit with a 35-16 run to end the game.

Two players Mitchell was particularly pleased with were freshman forward Brittany Henderson and junior guard Amber Smith, who Mitchell said “really stepped up in winning time.”

“I really liked the energy Brittany Henderson played with tonight,” Mitchell said. “It was just a tremendous example of a player that doesn’t know exactly what’s going on all the time, she’s a freshman and still learning … she was a person who came in and gave us some great energy.”

From the tipoff, UK was not clicking on offensive, especially not beyond the arc. The Cats were 1 of 9 from 3-point land and 11 of 32 from the floor overall in the first half. However, the Lady Mocs’ offense was not any better, as Chattanooga connected on two of their nine 3-point attempts and was 12-of-30 from the floor before intermission as the teams were deadlocked 26-26.

The Lady Mocs pushed UK on their heels to start the second half, and had the UK faithful worried when junior forward Victoria Dunlap picked up her third foul with over 18 minutes left in the game.

“It’s very frustrating for Victoria Dunlap to have three and four people on her, but at (the time Dunlap picked up her third foul) it was almost better for us because I thought we got too fixated on trying to get Vic going,” Mitchell said.

With Dunlap out of the game, UK had to rely on the likes of Henderson, sophomore guard Rebecca Gray and freshman guard A’dia Mathies, who led the Cats with 14 points.

“This is what (Mathies) does,” Gray said. “The good thing about being a freshman is you don’t know better, you just go out there and play and that’s what she doing for us. Her defense is uncharacteristically good for a freshman.”

The game marked the first time this season Dunlap failed to record a double-double, as she dueled arguably her toughest opponent in the paint in the season, Chattanooga senior Shanara Hollinquest, the Southern Conference player of the year last season, who led all scorers with 18 points.

Chattanooga head coach Wes Moore said although his team did a good job of shutting down Dunlap, her offense wasn’t the saving grace for the Cats.

“I thought Kentucky did a good job the last 10 minutes or so, they really turned (the heat) up and made it difficult for us to run our stuff and get the ball in the post,” Moore said.

For Moore, the game was eerily similar to his squad’s Nov. 19 matchup against No. 16 Georgia, another Southeastern Conference opponent, as his team held a lead at halftime before the Bulldogs cranked up the defensive pressure en route to 74-57 win.

Although Mitchell and his Cats are off to the best start since 2005-06, he knows work needs to be done.

“Tonight was not our best,” Mitchell said.