By Les Johns | Kernel staff writer

Getting up in the morning, writing a research paper and delivering a speech are activities that are typically dreaded. UK women’s basketball head coach Matthew Mitchell wants to add the task of playing his team to that list.

“We focus on being tough, tenacious and as coach says all the time, being dreaded,” preseason All-SEC guard A’dia Mathies said at the SEC Media Days in Birmingham, Ala., last week.

“We’re trying to be the toughest, most dreaded, scariest team in the country,” said senior UK Hoops guard Keyla Snowden. “We want to be so disciplined that we do not take a possession off.”

Two years ago, with a seven-to-eight player rotation, the Cats employed an up-tempo, full-court pressing style of play, forcing almost 23 turnovers per game en route to a 28-8 record and an Elite Eight appearance.

“It is really tough to prepare to play that way,” Mitchell said about the team’s style of play.

Now he is trying to instill that same tough-nosed approach to a deeper and potentially more talented roster of players, comprised partially of two consecutive top-10 recruiting classes. There is actually a concern that enough minutes may not be available for all the talent at Mitchell’s disposal.

“We have 15 players now,” Mathies said. “My freshman year we were really only playing eight, so it is a big difference.”

In terms of the team’s depth, Mitchell said, “I haven’t been in this position before.”

“It doesn’t matter if you are a senior or a freshman,” he said. “It matters what you do when you show up on the court every day and practice.”

The Cats’ defense forced 24 turnovers a game last year and averaged 5.9 steals and 4.4 blocks per game.

“You’re not going to play if you don’t play defense,” Mitchell said. “That is something we try to make very clear early on. If you don’t buy into that, there are enough people on the team that will and you will get left behind.”

Mitchell has a deep talent-laden team that he hopes will push itself to become better each day in practice.

“You can’t survive here if you’re not in to hard work,” he said.

“There’s a lot of rewards to coming here, but it’s not the easiest place in the country to play.”