No. 25 Kentucky men’s basketball (17-8, 8-4 SEC) fell to the No. 14 Florida Gators (19-6, 10-2 SEC) 92-83 on Saturday afternoon inside of the Stephen C. O’Connell Center in Gainesville, Fla.
The Cats entered “The Swamp” on a three-game win streak, while winning eight of their last nine games as well. On the other hand, Florida was on a four-game win streak and won nine of its last 10 games, meaning both sides were feeling the rhythm prior to tipoff.
A lot of headlines surrounded this game from the jump; Denzel Aberdeen made his return to Gainesville — where he won a national title last season — and the two teams were battling for first place in the current SEC standings and Otega Oweh was just five points away from scoring his 1000th career point as a Wildcat.
Kentucky head coach Mark Pope rolled out the same starting lineup that has been clicking as of recently: Otega Oweh, Aberdeen, Collin Chandler, Andrija Jelavic and Malachi Moreno.
The Gators jumped out to a 5-0 lead after guard Xavian Lee kicked off the scoring with a 3-pointer, which was then followed up by a layup from Alex Condon.
Aberdeen got the Cats on the board a little over a minute into the game, however, Florida went on to grab a 10-2 lead through the first 3:26, forcing an early UK timeout.
Out of the timeout, Chandler drained his first 3-point field goal of the night, pushing the score to 10-5 in favor of the Gators. But, from there, it didn’t take long for the Gators to get chomping again, building an 18-8 lead with 14:14 still left to go in the first half.
With 9:24 remaining in the first half, Kentucky was trailing 32-17, shooting 7-16 (43.8%) from the field and 2-3 (66.7%) from deep, while coughing up eight turnovers as well.
The Cats weren’t horrendously missing shots, but the defensive end is where they got picked apart, allowing Florida to shoot 12-19 (62.2%) from the field and 4-8 (50%) from deep with 8:30 still remaining.
Oweh was able to score his 1000th career point as a Wildcat with 6:05 remaining in the first half, becoming the 17th player to score at least 1,000 points in his first two years at UK, and the fifth UK transfer to score at least 1,000 career points in Kentucky blue.
The Wildcats were able to shrink the deficit back to eight points with five minutes remaining in the first half, closely trailing 32-26 after going on 10-0 scoring run in a little over three minutes.
Led by a team-high nine points from Aberdeen, Kentucky only went into halftime trailing 43-34, shooting 12-32 (37.5%) from the field and 3-8 (37.5) from deep as a whole.
The second half opened with an unsuccessful layup attempt from Florida’s Condon, and on the Cats’ first trip down, Aberdeen found the free-throw line and went 2-2.
Three minutes into the second half, Kentucky was able to close the deficit to just four points, now trailing 50-46 after Jelavic drained a deep 3-point field goal.
From there, Florida went on an important scoring stretch from around the 15-minute mark to the 13:14 mark, shooting 5-7 from the field while bumping its lead back up to eight points, holding a 59-51 advantage.
With just under 10 minutes remaining in the game, Condon and Urban Klavzar combined for a 7-0 scoring run, pushing Florida’s lead to 14 points, 72-58.
At this point, the Cats were being out-rebounded 38-28 and turned the ball over 12 times compared to Florida’s nine.
Chandler drilled a much-needed 3-pointer with just over four minutes remaining, which closed the gap back down to 10 points, and following that, Aberdeen flushed a mid-range jumpshot, which closed it down to eight.
Within the last three minutes of play, Kentucky scored 13 points, yet it wasn’t able to catch up to Florida, which was ultimately guided by a 22 -point outing from Lee.
Aberdeen led the Wildcats with a team-high 19 points in his return to Gainesville, while Chandler sat as the second-closest scorer with 18 points.
Kentucky will return to action next Tuesday, Feb. 17, hosting the Georgia Bulldogs (17-7, 5-6 SEC). Tipoff is set for 9 p.m. EST and will air live on ESPN.
