By Jamie H. Vaught
KySportsStyle.com Magazine
Against a formidable Oklahoma team, ranked No. 10 in this week’s AP Top 25 poll, No. 12 Kentucky couldn’t overcome some of its shortcomings Friday afternoon at SEC Women’s Tournament in Greenville, South Carolina, losing to the aggressive Sooners 69-65.
The Wildcats couldn’t hit their three-pointers, making only 17.4 percent (4 of 23 attempts).
The Wildcats couldn’t protect the ball, committing 20 turnovers.
The Wildcats, who don’t have a deep bench, had foul trouble with three players committing four fouls. They had only seven players who saw action for 14 minutes or more.
It's obvious that you’re not going to win many games that way, but Kentucky, which led most of the contest, almost did with Oklahoma also struggling with its field goal shooting at 31 percent.
The Wildcats, now 22-7 overall, will head for the NCAA Tournament. Oklahoma, now 25-6, will meet fifth-ranked South Carolina Saturday afternoon in the semifinals of the SEC tourney.
Despite the setback, Kentucky coach Kenny Brooks is optimistic, looking ahead to the NCAA Tournament.
“We're not done yet,” he said. “We got a lot of basketball left to play. This league is going to produce teams that are going to contend for a national championship. Even though our run in the SEC is over with, I'm excited to get out there and play with a whole new cast of characters all throughout the floor. See what we'll be able to do.”
All-SEC guard Georgia Amoore, who gunned in 43 points against Oklahoma during UK’s 95-86 win last month in Norman, had another fine performance against the Sooners Friday with game-highs 29 points and seven assists, but it wasn’t enough.
On Kentucky’s poor shooting (38 percent overall), Amoore said, “We just have to hit shots, plain and simple. I think we had open looks. There were even some possessions where we caught the ball, looked like it surprised us, and we hesitated. So that's on us.”
Kentucky’s Clara Strack, who earlier was named the SEC Defensive Player of the Year, added 12 points along with a game-high 16 rebounds.
“I thought she played well offensively,” Brooks said of Strack. “She got double-teamed quite a bit, a very aggressive double-team. When you're being doubled and the person that's doubling you, your teammates have to dive and put themselves in position to be available. We didn't do that several times. But she played hard. She endured a lot of physicality throughout the whole basketball game. She kept her composure.”
On the disappointing loss, Brooks commented, “it's not like we got upset, we lost to a bad team. Oklahoma has won nine in a row, ranked 10th in the country. Jennie (Baranczyk) does a really good job. They're a championship culture. They won two Big 12 championships in a row pretty much with that core of kids. They know how to win basketball games.
“We have to finish. We have to finish basketball games. I thought we had a good stretch. I know somebody's going to talk about fatigue, but with three minutes to go in the game, we're down by one and we have a double timeout. We did that intentionally so we could get some rest. When you get into those opportunities, you have to take advantage of them. There's some plays we'll look at down the stretch that we didn't make, and they made. That was a big part of the game.”
On Kentucky’s 20 turnovers, Brooks said, “Obviously in a game like this, Oklahoma, they're going to be aggressive on the defensive end. They're going to shoot gaps, gamble a lot. If you look at it, probably 10 or 11 of our turnovers were by our post players. Some of those are the tie-ups. They weren't turnovers that really hurt us. You want to give yourself a chance to shoot the basketball every time you get it. They weren't live-ball turnovers. They didn't hurt us that bad. Our post players getting double-teamed, we're not getting opportunities.”
Brooks didn’t have much to say about the physicality of the game and the inside play.
“I could talk about it, but I'm sure I'll get fined, so I guess I won't talk about it,” he said. “Congratulations (to Oklahoma). I can't wait to see the energy tomorrow when they play against South Carolina. It's going to be fun.”
As for the free throws, Kentucky hit 7 of 8 from the line, while the Sooners went 19 of 20.
Raegan Beers led Oklahoma with team-highs 20 points and 11 rebounds.
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