By Kevin Erpenbeck

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On paper, Sunday’s home game against a 2-6 Belmont team wasn’t supposed to be a closely contested match for No. 8 UK Hoops. But that’s exactly what the Bruins gave the Cats.

Belmont kept within striking distance of UK for more than half the game, but the Cats used their famous “40 minutes of dread” defense and a stellar performance by their bench to pull away late in the second half for a 71-55 victory.

“Hats off to Belmont. They competed extremely hard and certainly earned our respect,” said UK head coach Matthew Mitchell. “Their guards were able to keep their dribbles alive and they were very aggressive. They just move for 30 seconds … really tough for us.”

The win was UK’s (10-1) sixth in a row and sets up a challenging matchup against basketball powerhouse No. 13 Duke (5-3) at Cameron Indoor Stadium next week.

Mitchell was again displeased with the Cats’ slow start to a game. The coach executed a platoon-like substitution by removing all five of the starters just two minutes in to the game. Mitchell alluded to a lack of defensive intensity and immaturity as the reasons for the early game pulls.

“That was not my plan at the start of the game,” Mitchell said. “There are a couple of things that you notice as a coach that you can tell if they are mentally prepared or not. This team is fighting that. We are not getting off to very good starts in games and it’s maddening as a coach.”

The move proved to pay off as the bench outscored the starters by a 44-27 margin and wore down Belmont with a game-long full-court press.

Bruins’ head coach Cameron Newbauer said he was proud of his players’ fight and thought the team got better, despite the 16-point loss.

“I don’t think the final score is quite indicative of what it was,” Newbauer said. “(UK) is a great team that has a lot of depth. What Matthew has going here is tremendous. I’m just really excited for how hard we competed.”

But no matter how hard or competitive the Bruins played, they just couldn’t string together the offensive drives needed to pass the Cats.

“The way they play with the pressure (defense) is nonstop coming at you,” Newbauer said. “It wears you down mentally and physically. Forty minutes of dread? Yeah, you dread it for 40 minutes. They were still pressing when we put our subs in. They’re great at it.”

One of UK’s bench players that finished with double digit points was senior center Azia Bishop. The 6-foot-3 Toledo, Ohio native led all players in points with 15 and pulled in 12 rebounds for a double-double performance.

Bishop lost her starting spot against Middle Tennessee State on Friday after starting the first nine games of the season. She said coming off the bench actually helps her feel more comfortable because she can see the flow of the game from the sideline.

“I know what I have to come in and do, which has given me that extra push to go out there and play harder,” Bishop said. The center also had four blocks on the night.

Sophomore guard Linnae Harper and freshman forward Alexis Jennings were the other two reserves with double digit scoring with 12 and 10 points, respectively. Junior guard Janee Thompson was the only starter over 10-plus points  with 12.

Mitchell was impressed with Bishop’s effort, and said the team will need her when they face off against bigger teams down the road, like Duke and No. 1 South Carolina.

“I thought she had some really great moments of fight and really there for the first portion of the game. At times, she was the only one,” Mitchell said. “We need her offensive rebounding energy and transition offense. It’s taxing these other teams when she runs down the floor.”

But despite the 10 wins the Cats have accumulated, Mitchell said the slow starts to games are starting to exhaust him, and that he will continue to experiment with ways on how to make the trend end.

“We’ve got to get this thing figured out,” Mitchell said. “We can’t sit around here and complain ‘we don’t have the leadership.’ Maybe it will always be a collective effort and a 40-minute game. I don’t know. We will certainly try to get past that and try to solve that.”