Things weren’t looking good for the Kentucky basketball team on Saturday night. The Cats trailed by 18 points in the second half against No. 7 Gonzaga in a de facto road game for UK.

Then things changed. Head coach Mark Pope switched to a zone defense and slowed a Gonzaga offensive attack that had scored 50 points in the first half. The Cats also started playing offense. Ultimately, Kentucky would win by a single point in overtime.

What allowed the Cats to recover from a double-digit deficit in the second half? Ansley Almonor thinks she knows why.

“We are tough. We’re a really resilient group,” Almonor said. “After being down 16-18 in the second half, most teams at that point would just collapse and give up, but we’re an experienced team and we knew we were better and we just had to go out there and execute the game plan and do that “That’s what we did.”

The change in defensive strategy did not come out of the blue. It was actually something the Cats had been working on for a while.

“We practice this extensively,” Almonor said. “In those situations, when the opposing offense is on a good run, we just throw something different at them to see how they respond. The implementation we wanted to do was to confuse them a little bit, slow them down a little bit, mess up their flow and see how they reacted to it. They didn’t react that well, so I think it definitely worked.”

The Cats now turn their attention to Colgate, which comes to Rupp Arena on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN2). The Raiders are 2-8 this season, but Almonor has seen some good things from the Raiders on film.

“They try to shoot a lot of threes, they play pretty fast. They know how to guard, it will be a good little challenge for us.”

Almonor knows Kentucky’s goal is continuous improvement, and that’s exactly what the Cats will strive for on Wednesday.

“Coach tries to preach to us that we’re going to get better every day,” Almonor said. “It was a big win for us, but we’re trying to get better every day. Today is another opportunity.”

The next opportunity to get better comes Wednesday night when a Kentucky team coming off a big win takes on Colgate at Rupp Arena.