Rebounding woes were the name of the game in Kentucky WBB's loss to Georgia

It’s no secret that the Kentucky women’s basketball team has been bad at rebounding as a unit.

Despite Ajae Petty being third in the SEC in rebounds per game (10.7), the collective unit has been mediocre at best. Kentucky is averaging 33.7 rebounds per game, which sits at dead last in the SEC. Next to last is Missouri, who grabs 37.0 rebounds per game, so the margin there is significant.

Speaking of margins, Kentucky has the third-worst average rebound margin per game among major conference teams. Opponents, on average, grab four more rebounds than Kentucky per game. That’s not Kentucky being out-rebounded by four in games where they do get out-rebounded, that’s an average for every game. Again, UK’s rebounding is abysmal, and that was the case against Georgia as well.

On Sunday, the Bulldogs grabbed 43 rebounds to Kentucky’s 23. Petty led the team in rebounding with just five to her name. Kentucky hasn’t seen a rebounding effort that poor since the South Carolina game, but even that was better than this. Kentucky’s 23 rebounds were a season low, which was actually tied with the losses to Colorado and Louisville.

‘Cats need to “commit” to crashing the glass

Following Kentucky’s loss to Georgia, head coach Kyra Elzy took the podium, where she would address the rebounding issues herself.

“I think what went wrong is that we need five people to the defensive boards,” Elzy noted. “We gotta commit to that consistently, getting five people to the boards. We can’t be leaking out. We got caught in between today. We were leaking out before we had the basketball, but we gotta commit to five people going to the defensive boards.”

Elzy is noting here that it can’t just be Ajae Petty battling down low, but it has to be a full team effort. It’s going to be hard to out-rebound a team when it’s one vs five. However, Elzy does briefly defend the rebounding effort by explaining Kentucky’s philosophy when it comes to offensive rebounding specifically.

“Offensively, that’s a little different because we only had three going to the offensive boards so we could get our defense set. Obviously, Georgia likes to run in transition, and we didn’t want to give them easy scoring opportunities.”

It’s hard to argue with that philosophy, simply because most teams do that, especially against a fast-paced offense like Georgia. Even the best of the best will give up an offensive rebound if that means getting a stop on the other end.

However, if the poor rebound margins keep costing Kentucky games, then that may be enough to warrant a change in the rebounding philosophy.