UK Hoops 57, Florida Gators 52: Postmortem

Anyone who had tickets to the UK Hoops game today needed the break at halftime. Just to catch their breath. Just watching Matthew Mitchell's girls go at it on the court will wear you out. Mitchell's Forty Minutes Of Dread is some of the toughest, in your face, woman-to-woman defense I have ever seen from either gender on the basketball court. The UK Hoops squad gets in your face at the tip-off, and they don't come out of it until the halftime buzzer goes off, and in the second half it is simply more of the same.

A'dia Mathies struggled the first half to get her shot off as she was held scoreless. But Bria Goss and Brittany Henderson held up for the Hoops squad with 4 pts each in a low scoring half that was pretty much a defensive clinic on both sides of the ball. And far be it from the Hoops squad to try and give the UK men any hassles, but they also had 4 blocks in the first half alone. The big element missing from the Hoops squad's efforts was zero 3-pt shots, as they went 0-5 from the field from beyond the arc. Samarie Walker carried the load though with 6 pts, 2 blocks, 3 reb, on 3-4 shooting.

The second half started much better for the Hoops squad as they jumped out to a 7 pt lead on the Lady Gators as Mathies got her first basket to start things off. They then extended that to a 12 pt lead by out-hustling the Lady Gators at every turn. Florida was not about to fold though, as they brought themselves back from a 15 point deficit, shrinking it to low as 7 pts before the Hoops squad started another run.

The game then became a back and forth battle of wills with Coach Mitchell's charges never taking their foot off the gas. Size is a bit of a factor right now for the ladies as they are still quite small at the point and 2 guard spots, but as they get more size on the floor with oncoming freshmen, this team is going to be harder and harder to handle. Florida would not let up as they whittled the Kentucky lead down to four with 1:43 left on the clock. It then dropped to two with :50 left before two Bria Goss FT's put the Cats back on top by four with :22 on the clock. The Lady Gators again cut the lead to two and sent Keyla Snowden to the line where she made both her FT's to put the lead back to four. The back and forth almost became more than Kentucky could handle. The Hoops squad went up by three on another Keyla Snowden FT with :06 left, when A'dia Mathies intercepted a Florida pass on the in-bounds deep on the UK end of the court before Florida fouled Snowden again, and she made both FT's to ice the game. Final UK Hoops 57- Florida 52.

All in all, a decent game that was a tough, physical matchup for the UK Hoops squad. Coach Mitchell is going to be using this tape for a lot of teaching, but the Hoops squad gets another SEC win. Next up for Kentucky will be the Lady Tigers of Auburn on Jan 26th at 7:00. There will be no live game blog due to no TV and no internet coverage.