By Kevin Erpenbeck

[email protected]

UK Hoops is hurting in more ways than one.

The Cats are on a three-game losing streak after dropping Monday’s road match to Ole Miss. The loss dropped No. 13 UK to 8-6 in the SEC, good for sixth place in the conference.

Losing to the Rebels may not even be the worse result from Monday. During the first half of the game, sophomore point guard Makayla Epps limped to the bench after suffering both a strained Achilles and a strained tendon in her toe. She was helped to the locker room by team trainers at halftime.

Epps returned in the second half but was limited. She finished with one point on an 0-for-5 shooting night.

The 5-foot-10 sophomore is UK’s leading scorer, averaging more than 14 points a game. Epps has been a star for the team since taking over the point position after junior Janee Thompson went down with a season-ending injury on Jan. 11. Epps had scored double-digit points in every match in which she started, aside from Monday, and had four-plus assists in five different games.

Head coach Matthew Mitchell revealed on Tuesday that Epps was still experiencing pain from her injuries and that he decided to sit her out of practice in the team’s preparation for Arkansas.

“She is just going to have a great day of mental preparation and we just feel like a day of rest is important for her,” Mitchell said on Wednesday. “There are different things that make it hurt more than others. Mentally, she is just going to get to a spot where she can just play hard.”

Mitchell added that the team expects Epps to feel well enough to play against Arkansas, but he knows she will still be in pain come tip- off.

“You never know how the game is going to go and how her injury is going to react, but her mindset is to push through it and play through it,” Mitchell said.

The injury comes at a bad time for the Cats as they are going through one of their worst offensive slumps of the year. In the three straight losses, UK, has failed to match its season-average in points per game by seven points or more. The team has also shot below 38 percent in each game, including a season-low 32 percent on Monday.

Mitchell said when the offense struggles the way it has, it only puts more pressure to get stops on defense.

“We are just not making open shots,” Mitchell said. “We’re getting some offensive rebounds and just not finishing at the rim and missing a ton of layups. Everybody is playing us the same way. Arkansas looks like they’ll play us the same way and force us to make some perimeter shots. At some point, you have to step in there and make them.”

With two games to go before the SEC Tournament starts, UK does not have a lot of time to regroup and heal from its injuries. The Cats are virtually eliminated from securing a double-bye in the tournament and are now just hoping to win its 20th game in the regular season for a school-record sixth-straight season.

The only way for the team to do that is to persevere, Mitchell said.

“This is no time to flinch or to hang your head,” Mitchell said. “You can rise and meet the challenge or shrink away from it. I believe this team is going to rise up.”