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  • Women's basketball feature on Makayla Epps from SEC Media Days

    By: LARRY VAUGHT


    UKAthletics.com

    CHARLOTTE — Bria Goss prides herself as a team leader for Kentucky. However, she also knows that sophomore guard Makayla Epps is unique.

    “Makayla has a different attitude. I think she carries herself in a different way. I trust her in a lot because when she says she wants to get something done, she usually accomplishes it. I know me as a leader, she’s someone I can rely on,” said Goss during the Southeastern Conference Media Days here Tuesday.

    Senior teammate Bria Goss remembers when players had to do a test coach Matthew Mitchells calls “20 in 20”during the summer. It’s 20 suicide drills in 20 minutes.

    “It’s 20 suicides in 20 minutes. She had failed it the first time and she made a promise to herself and the team that she would pass it the next time and that’s what she did. She passed it,” O’Neill said.

    “And it was before anybody said anything to her or brought it up. She was like, ‘Guys, I’m going to get this done.’ And she went back the next time, which was like four weeks (and did it),” Goss said.

    She was named Kentucky’s 2013 Miss Basketball after helping Marion County to an undefeated season and averaged a team-high 23.0 points, 5.5 assists, 4.3 steals and 5.5 rebounds per game. She was named a McDonald’s All-American.

    Epps, who scored over 3,300 points in high school, played in 34 of UK’s 35 games last season and averaged 4.6 points and 1.4 rebounds per game. Epps, a point guard who can play other positions and daughter of former UK point guard Anthony Epps, had 46 assists and 21 turnovers in the 34 games.

    She’s a strong, powerful guard and can be a relentless defender who dives on the floor and is not afraid to go inside and take a hit.

    Kentucky coach Matthew Mitchell has big expectations for his sophomore this year and notes that she was “doing good things” before a midseason car wreck on her way back to school.

    “Rolled her car seven times. People react to those things differently. We basically lost a month there on when she was reflecting back on how close to death she was,” the UK coach said. “I don’t know how else to describe that. We just didn’t have her there for a month in the season which was a critical time in her development.

    “She really didn’t have a chance to get in great shape. She had a knee problem in the summer. Her devleopment was greatly affected by those two events. You started to see her come on at the end of the season.

    “But I am telling you now, you won’t recognize her now. She is in great shape, the greatest shape of her life. She is a force to be reckoned with. I don’t know if anybody will give her any recognition in the preseason (honors), and it is not really important that they do or not, but I think she is going to be one of the major factors in this conference at the end of the season. If she continues to practice the way she is practicing, she is a very, very exceptional player.”

    Mitchell knew Epps needed time to recover emotionally after her accident and had no impulse to push her too hard.

    “I always care more about them as people than players. I don’t know what other people do, but it will never matter to me as much what is going on between the lines as it does what kind of people they are becoming. I believe this, the better people we can help them be, the better players they will ultimately be,” Mitchell said.

    “That wasn’t difficult for me to handle because we just put her progress as a person first. We had some hard conversations ... the time when she was out there she should have been in Lexington at her apartment and not running up and down the road and trying to do too much. That’t the thing you sometimes run into with local kids. It is so easy for them to get back and forth. We just tried to learn as many lessons as we could from a very close call there. We are just happy it has ended up the way that it has.”
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