By Kindsey Bernhard
NKyTribune Intern
The UK women’s basketball team will begin the quest for the conference tournament crown Friday afternoon in Greenville, South Carolina.
The Wildcats finished 11-5 in the Southeastern Conference with a 95-87 loss to seventh-ranked South Carolina in Columbia on Sunday. That marked UK’s most conference wins since the 2012-13 season and netted the team a bye for the first two rounds.
The tournament begins Wednesday, but the Wildcats will begin play on Friday at approximately 2 p.m., 25 minutes after the finish of the first game, which begins at noon.
On Wednesday, 12th-seeded Alabama will play 13th-seeded Vanderbilt. The winner of that game advances to play fifth-seeded Tennessee on Thursday.
Kentucky, 20-9 overall, will face the winner of that game on Friday. UK lost its only game against Tennessee this season 72-65 at Knoxville. UK defeated Alabama 75-64 in Tuscaloosa and Vanderbilt 71-53 in Lexington.
The top-four finish in the SEC marks head coach Matthew Mitchell’s seventh top four finish in conference play. UK has now won 10 or more games in SEC play in eight straight seasons.
If UK wins on Friday, the Wildcats advance to the semifinals at 5 p.m. on Saturday. If play follows the seeding, that would match Kentucky against South Carolina, the top seed in the tournament. Kentucky lost home and road games to the Gamecocks in February.
The championship game will be Sunday at 3 p.m.
UK’s only SEC Tournament championship came in 1982, two years after the first SEC Women’s Tournament. The tournament was hosted in Memorial Coliseum in Lexington.
The tournament will be held at the Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C. This is the second time Greenville has hosted the SEC Women’s Tournament. The first was in 2005.
The entire tournament will be televised nationally. The first three rounds will air on the SEC Network, the semifinals will be on ESPNU on Saturday and the championship will air Sunday afternoon on ESPN.
Kindsey Bernhard is a journalism senior at the University of Kentucky. She is from Ft. Wright and played high school basketball at Notre Dame Academy.