First quarter woes once again hurt Kentucky WBB in loss to Arkansas

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first-quarter-woes-once-again-hurt-kentucky-wbb-loss-arkansas — Photo by Morgan Simmons | UK Athletics

Kentucky women’s basketball may have lost to Arkansas 88-61 earlier this week, but this game was ultimately decided with 3:17 left to go in the first quarter as the Razorbacks started the game on an 18-0 run. From there, Kentucky failed to fight back against a depleted Arkansas team. Now, the ‘Cats are 2-4 in conference play.

Following the game, Kyra Elzy opened up her press conference giving her thoughts on the start of the game.

“Difficult way to start a game, obviously. It’s clearly not how we wanted to start the game,” Elzy said. “I thought Arkansas threw the first punch tonight and we never regrouped. I thought [Arkansas] went downhill early and we did not handle that. Didn’t rotate our defense.”

Unfortunately, there’s plenty of tape showing where UK failed on defensive assignments, as Coach Elzy pointed out.

.@MakaylaDaniels5 takes it to the rack again!!!

Kentucky calls time pic.twitter.com/ilPjtKxdZu
— Razorback WBB (@RazorbackWBB) January 26, 2024

She continued, “I thought they got to the free throw line and got easy layups early, which I think affected us. Then, when we went down, I thought we were panicked offensively. One pass, two pass, throw up a shot. Didn’t make the defense shift and move.”

The worst part? This horrible start to the game wasn’t a one-off scenario. This has become a recurring theme for Kentucky.

The ‘Cats have been very, very bad in the first quarter all season

Kentucky trailed 29-10 after the first quarter against Arkansas. That’s a 19-point deficit after just 10 minutes of play.

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It only gets worse from here, I’m afraid.

Of the 20 games that the ‘Cats have played this season, they have been down after the first quarter in 13 of them. Additionally, in the first quarter, Kentucky’s opponents have outscored the Wildcats by 64 points, 370-306.

That puts the average score at 18.5-15.3 after the first quarter in favor of the other team. Not an ideal way to start. While that may not seem like a huge margin, that means that Kentucky is, on average, having to make a comeback to get the win in every game.

In the SEC, it’s going to be hard to fight from behind, especially when you don’t have the talent of the South Carolina’s and LSU’s of the world. If the ‘Cats want to compete and survive in this conference, then they can’t afford to keep starting down so early.