On Saturday night, things were not looking good for the Kentucky basketball team. The Cats found themselves down 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 went to a zone defense, slowing down a Gonzaga offensive attack that had scored 50 points in the first half. The Cats started to make plays on the offensive end as well. Ultimately, Kentucky would win by a single point in overtime.

What allowed the Cats to rally from a double-digit, second-half deficit? Ansley Almonor believes he knows why.

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

As for the switching of the defensive strategy, it was not something that came out of the blue. It was actually something the Cats had been working on for a while.

“We practice that a good amount,” Almonor said. “In situations like that, when the opposing offense has a good flow, we just throw something different at them to see how they react to that. The execution we wanted to do was 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 worked for sure.”

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 on the 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’s going to be a good little challenge for us.”

Almonor knows that Kentucky’s goal is constant improvement, and that’s what the Cats will be looking for on Wednesday.

“Coach tries to preach to us about getting better every day,” Almonor said. “That was a big win for us, but each day, we’re just trying to get better. Today is another opportunity.”

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