Cats hold off Commodores
[caption id="attachment_173100" align="aligncenter" width="600"]
photo by Britney Howard, UK athletics[/caption]
Coming off an emotional win against a good Georgia team at home, no. 11/12 Kentucky traveled to Nashville this afternoon to pick up an 82-68 victory over a scrappy Vanderbilt team. Sophomore guards Linnae Harper and Makayla Epps lead the way offensively with a combined 40 (49%) of the teams’ points.
Harper added 6 rebounds and 3 assist while tying her career high 22 points. Alyssa Rice, a freshman center who hasn’t scored a ton this season, tripled her season average of 2.9 points scoring 9 today, also a career high. Coach Matthew Mitchell praised Rice for her work ethic post-game saying, “she has been working as hard as a human being can work.”
It was a game of runs where Vanderbilt seemed to always hang around no matter what UK did. On Friday, Mitchell pointed out that he was expecting a tough game. “They’re hard to score against and have another really good defensive team and will make it difficult on us,” the head coach said. He was right: Kentucky had 20 turnovers and just 12 assists. Luckily, UK's defense was a little better, forcing 25 turnovers. The two also combined for 42 team fouls.
Just recently, Makayla Epps was named to the Nancy Lieberman Award watch list, annually awarded to the nation’s top point guard. Epps kept up her hot scoring streak with 18 points on 8/14 shooting, but somewhat struggled outside of scoring the ball with 5 turnovers and 2 assists.
With the win, UK moves up to tied (with Mississippi State and LSU) for third in the SEC behind Tennessee and top-ranked South Carolina. There's just six games left on the schedule, and four of them are against ranked opponents, including rematches against UT and USC. Right now, the Cats are a likely 3-seed for the NCAA tournament, but they could easily fall to a 5 or rise to a 2 depending on how the remaining games go.
Today marked the third straight win for the Cats at Memorial Gymnasium, and eighth straight overall against Vandy. UK will now return to the better Memorial on Thursday night when they take on no. 17 Mississippi State at home to hopefully gain sole possession of third in the league. J.C. and I will be in attendance, but if you can’t make it you can still catch it on the SEC Network.
photo by Britney Howard, UK athletics[/caption]
Coming off an emotional win against a good Georgia team at home, no. 11/12 Kentucky traveled to Nashville this afternoon to pick up an 82-68 victory over a scrappy Vanderbilt team. Sophomore guards Linnae Harper and Makayla Epps lead the way offensively with a combined 40 (49%) of the teams’ points.
Harper added 6 rebounds and 3 assist while tying her career high 22 points. Alyssa Rice, a freshman center who hasn’t scored a ton this season, tripled her season average of 2.9 points scoring 9 today, also a career high. Coach Matthew Mitchell praised Rice for her work ethic post-game saying, “she has been working as hard as a human being can work.”
It was a game of runs where Vanderbilt seemed to always hang around no matter what UK did. On Friday, Mitchell pointed out that he was expecting a tough game. “They’re hard to score against and have another really good defensive team and will make it difficult on us,” the head coach said. He was right: Kentucky had 20 turnovers and just 12 assists. Luckily, UK's defense was a little better, forcing 25 turnovers. The two also combined for 42 team fouls.
Just recently, Makayla Epps was named to the Nancy Lieberman Award watch list, annually awarded to the nation’s top point guard. Epps kept up her hot scoring streak with 18 points on 8/14 shooting, but somewhat struggled outside of scoring the ball with 5 turnovers and 2 assists.
With the win, UK moves up to tied (with Mississippi State and LSU) for third in the SEC behind Tennessee and top-ranked South Carolina. There's just six games left on the schedule, and four of them are against ranked opponents, including rematches against UT and USC. Right now, the Cats are a likely 3-seed for the NCAA tournament, but they could easily fall to a 5 or rise to a 2 depending on how the remaining games go.
Today marked the third straight win for the Cats at Memorial Gymnasium, and eighth straight overall against Vandy. UK will now return to the better Memorial on Thursday night when they take on no. 17 Mississippi State at home to hopefully gain sole possession of third in the league. J.C. and I will be in attendance, but if you can’t make it you can still catch it on the SEC Network.
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