Kentucky Women Look to Break Skid Against Louisville

The Kentucky ladies’s basketball crew earned its most spectacular win of the season on Wednesday night time, topping Minnesota 80-74 in Minneapolis. Now, the Cats face one other problem, taking up intrastate rival Louisville on Sunday at Rupp Area.

Any time the Cats and the Playing cards meet, it means rather a lot, particularly to gamers on each groups who hail from Kentucky. UK head coach Kyra Elzy is aware of that the sport is essential to Bluegrass natives.

“Clearly, they’re enthusiastic about it. They grew up within the state of Kentucky,” Elzy mentioned. “It’s an enormous recreation as a result of it’s the following one on our schedule and it’s the College of Louisville.”

UK graduate pupil Blair Inexperienced can be dealing with Louisville for the ultimate time. The Harlan County native at all times seems ahead to enjoying the Playing cards, particularly at Rupp.

“It’s at all times an enormous recreation. It’s a enjoyable recreation with quite a lot of power,” Inexperienced mentioned. “We at all times have an enormous turnout at Rupp Area. It’s my final yr. Everybody will get actually hyped about this recreation. It’s an enormous recreation. It’s an enormous rivalry. It is a large recreation, they’re an amazing crew. This recreation undoubtedly stands out.”

Kentucky leads the all-time collection with Louisville 34-23, together with a 22-6 mark in video games performed in Lexington. Nonetheless, the Playing cards have received the final 5 video games within the collection. Nonetheless, 4 of these video games have been very shut.

In 2016, the Playing cards received 69-67. Two years later, it was U of L holding off UK 80-75. In 2019, Kentucky trailed by only one and had the ball within the arms of Rhyne Howard with the sport on the road. However the future WNBA high decide’s three-pointer on the buzzer missed, and Louisville held on for a 67-66 win. Final season, Kentucky led Louisville on the half, solely to fall 64-58.

Inexperienced is aware of that final season’s recreation might have gone both method. And he or she pinpointed precisely what went unsuitable.

“I feel we actually had an amazing struggle towards them final yr,” Inexperienced mentioned. “The factor we lacked was simply the beginning. The beginning received us in a gap.”

Kentucky’s final win towards Louisville got here on Dec. 10, 2015, when Makayla Epps hit 10 of 11 pictures from the ground on her method to 24 factors in a 72-54 UK victory.

Sophomore Jada Walker has been a standout for the Cats to this point this season. She averages 15.4 factors, 3.8 assists and three.4 steals per recreation by way of eight contests. Robyn Benton is scoring 14.8 factors per recreation and has made a team-high 9 three-pointers on the season. Inexperienced is Kentucky’s different double-figure scorer, averaging 10.4 factors per recreation.

The guard mixture of Walker and Maddie Scherr, one other native Kentuckian, has made the Cats efficient on each ends of the court docket by way of eight video games. Scherr leads the crew and the SEC in assists (6.3 per recreation), together with averaging 6.3 factors and 5.3 rebounds per contest.

Kentucky will look to interrupt it’s five-game skid towards Louisville on Sunday. It will be an enormous win for the Cats, particularly the native Kentuckians.