By Anthony Crawford

When trying to prevent a comeback, it is important to limiting the opponent’s to only one opportunity on offense. Junior Evelyn Akhator single-handedly answered the call, pulling down 11 defensive rebounds and 17 total. The forward’s size and athleticism also helped on offense, where she contributed 16 points.

“You can see how explosive she is and when she goes up for the ball, there’s not a lot of people who can get it from her,” head coach Matthew Mitchell said. “She’s really strong and she’s just motivated to rebound.”

Despite nearly matching Rice in turnovers with 22, the game had a positive outcome. The mistakes could be attributed to inexperience as it was the first game at UK for many of the players and the team was also without a key leader, junior Makayla Epps who was sitting out her one game suspension.

“What I love so much about our team is almost all of the mistakes are through inexperience,” Mitchell said. “It’s not because they aren’t trying hard and not hustling.”