The No. 12 UK women’s basketball team (15-3, 4-3) returned to Memorial Coliseum on Monday night for a nail-biting win over the No. 19 Tennessee Lady Vols (12-7, 3-3) 64-63.

Despite some missed free throws from UK towards the end, Tennessee’s Andraya Carter missed a vital second free though that could have tied the game 63-63.

“I am very proud of our team tonight,” UK head coach Matthew Mitchell said. 

The Cats are coming off a hard-hitting loss Thursday night to Ole Miss 73-65 in Oxford. The Lady Vols did not take it easy on the Cats either, as the contest came down to the final minutes to decide a winner. 

“It was a really important game for us,” UK guard Janee Thompson said. “We didn’t play well at Ole Miss so we needed a bounce back.”

The Cats had a hard time getting their shots to fall during the entire first half, shooting a measly 30 percent while Tennessee shot over 50 percent. Overall, the Cats ended up shooting 36.2 percent while Tennessee shot almost 42 percent. UK, however, did outscore the Lady Vols in the paint 34-16.

UK’s leading scorer Makayla Epps took off at the beginning of the second half, scoring the first seven points of the half for the Cats. She continues to leads the team in scoring averaging 16.6 ppg.  

“The attitude (Epps) needs to have is that no one can guard her,” Mitchell said. “She really, really took over in the third quarter and that was a huge positive development for our team.”

Epps stayed hot for the entire second half as she added ten more points after the first seven. She ended the game leading the Cats offensively with 23 points. The junior guard also notched two rebounds, an assist and a block.

“If you’re on the floor for 39 minutes, you got to do something,” Epps said. “Coach told me to have fun so I started having fun.”

The Cats went on a 12-0 run in the third quarter to lead going into the final quarter 49-44. Epps stepped on the gas pedal once again and hit a much needed three for the Cats in the fourth quarter. 

“It’s very frustrating,” Tennessee’s Mercedes Russell said. “I think we definitely lost in the third quarter. We let Epps do whatever she wanted.”

Russell ended the game with a double-double, putting up 12 points and bringing down 10 rebounds while adding a block to the mix.

“I thought the third quarter we let the game slip away and we had to battle back,” Tennessee head coach Holly Warlick said. “I thought we had great looks, I thought were going to win the basketball game. We had our chances, we had great looks, and we didn’t get it done.”

But the 10-point lead UK gained did not last long enough to end the game. The Lady Vols fought back to make it a two-point game with two minutes left to go in the game.

“The last minute of the game was crazy,” Thompson said. “There was so much back and forth. Both teams kept giving each other the ball.”

There were a total of 11 lead changes during the game with a season low of just 10 turnovers for the Cats, while Tennessee had 21 turnovers.

“For me, the 21 turnovers set the mood for the whole game,” Warlick said.

On the other hand, Coach Mitchell joked about his team only having 10 turnovers after the game.

“Only 10 turnovers is a miracle for us right now,” Mitchell said. “That is really, if you don’t believe in God, you need to go check that out because that’s about like him walking on water right there. That was a good development for us, 10 turnovers.”

Thompson added 15 points for the Cats with six assists and three steals. Batouly Camara had a first career start tonight and was just shy of a double-double with eight points and a team best-nine rebounds adding two blocks to the mix as well.

“They beat us the last three games, one at home, one away, and one in the SEC tournament.” Epps said. “We owed ‘em one.”