Petty is having a historic season for Kentucky and has become one of the SEC's best rebounders. (Vicky Graff Photo)
The Kentucky women’s basketball team is struggling again this season and coming off a 62-point loss at South Carolina going into today’s game with Missouri but do not overlook what senior forward Ajax Petty has done.
She had 10 double-doubles in UK’s first 18 games but downplayed what she had done even before South Carolina focused its defense on her and stopped her double-double streak.
“I think my teammates always do a great job of trying to look for me and trying to get the ball,” Petty said. “It just shows the work that I’ve been putting in and just continuing to put in.”
Petty has 23 points and 21 rebounds in a recent loss to Vanderbilt. The only other player ever to have a 20-20 game was UK’s all-time leading scorer Valerie Still on Dec. 29, 1982. Still actually had two 20-20 games
Petty has had three 20-15 double-double games this season. She’s leading Kentucky in scoring at 15.7 points per game as well as rebounding (10.9 per game), blocked shots (16), steals (24) and total minutes played (543).
Petty knew she would be asked to play more minutes this year and she focused on her conditioning most of last summer.
“Just making sure I came back in the best shape that I could possibly be in. When you’re not in shape you have a lot of mental lapses,” she said. “It’s little things like going and chasing the ball when everybody else is tired just because I’m more conditioned than the people that I’m playing against.”
Petty is trying to help keep the team’s morale up despite the struggles the team has had and likely will continue to have.
“Just not looking at the outside factors on like what’s going on around us, taking what’s going on right now and just moving forward. Learning from what’s going on,” Petty said.
“I think that’s the biggest thing to continue to watch the film and watch what we need to improve on and then just wanting to do it. Wanting to get in the gym, wanting to watch the film, wanting to see what we can do better in order to improve.”
