Pregame Stuff: Kentucky at Florida (Saturday noon)
Friday, March 2, 2018 | Men's Basketball, Chris Harry
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A nuts and bolts look at UF's regular-season finale against rival and 23rd-ranked UK.
By: Chris Harry, Senior Writer
No. 23 KENTUCKY at FLORIDA
When: Saturday, noon (EST) Where: Exactech Arena/O'Connell Center, Gainesville, Fla. Records: Florida (19-11, 10-7); Kentucky (21-9, 10-7) TV: CBS (Ian Eagle and Jim Spanarkel) Radio: Gator IMG Sports Network (Mick Hubert and Bill Koss)
STAKES (The Setup)
The Gators, both on and off the floor, fed off the energy of last weekend's sellout crowd in the win over Auburn. Saturday's date with Kentucky has been sold out since last summer.
Florida, by virtue of back-to-back wins at home over Southeastern Conference-leading Auburn and on the road at Alabama, is a lock for an at-large berth in the NCAA Tournament and is now playing for seeding, both in the in the NCAA bracket and the SEC Tournament, the latter set for next week in St. Louis. By defeating the Crimson Tide on the road Tuesday night, the Gators with a win Saturday can wrap up the No. 3 seed in the conference tournament, meaning a bye into Friday's quarterfinal round. A win over the Wildcats will do that, but a UK win will give that third spot to the Cats. UF can still get a bye with a loss, but only if Missouri defeats Arkansas at home Saturday, an outcome that would leave those teams (and possibly Mississippi State) tied for fourth with a 10-8 league mark. In that scenario, the Gators would get the tiebreaker based on head-to-head victories over each. ... Kentucky, meanwhile, is on a four-game winning streak, having defeated Ole Miss 96-78 at home Wednesday. The streak is the longest in league play for the Cats this season and followed a four-game losing skid. ... UK is back in the Associated Press Top 25 after a three-week absence and has won its last four by double digits. ... Kentucky leads the all-time series 100-39, including a 35-25 record when playing in Gainesville. UF defended the home court last season, with an 88-66 trouncing of No. 8 UK that marked the program's worse loss when ranked in the top 10 in 35 years. ... The two teams last squared off Jan. 20, when the Gators defeated the Cats 66-64 in Lexington, marking just the 10th road wn for UF in the series. Florida got 17 points and a huge blocked shot from Jalen Hudson in the final seconds, as the Gators' twice thwarted the Cats on the game's final possession with standout defensive plays. Florida won despite shooting just 33 percent for the game and 20 percent from the 3-point line (6-for-30), instead limiting Kentucky to only 39 percent overall, four treys and forcing the Wildcats into 17 turnovers. The win, at the time, gave UF a 6-1 mark in league play, but the Gators are just 4-6 in the 10 games since. ... Florida will try to sweep Kentucky for just the sixth time in the series' 91-year history, and for the first time since 2014.
Set your alarm and get there early, as the Rowdy Reptiles figure to have a field day lobbing pregame barbs at Kentucky point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the freshman who in the fall of 2016 -- mere days from the early signing period -- reneged on a 14-month verbal commitment to play at Florida and signed with the Wildcats, instead. To backtrack, Gilgeous-Alexander was a virtual unknown on the summer circuit when first-year UF coach Mike White fell for him, and saw the Canadian playmaker as the player the Gators would build around in the post-Billy Donovan era. Florida offered a scholarship when most barely knew who the kid was. Give White some credit for identifying talent when he saw it, because the following spring and summer, Gilgeous-Alexander blew up on the AAU circuit. Yet, through all his new-found attention, Gilgeous-Alexander assured the Gators he was solid with his commitment and would remain true to his word. In return, Florida kept its promise and did not recruit another point guard -- and then everything changed. Gilgeous-Alexander backed out and left the Gators scrambling to find an unsigned point guard (which ended up being Mike Okauru). Now a slam-dunk SEC All-Freshman candidate and projected first-round pick in the 2018 NBA Draft, Gilgeous-Alexander is scoring 13.0 points per game to go with 3.9 rebounds and 4.9 assists per game. He can be careless with the basketball, evidenced by his less than 2-for-1 assist-to-turnover ratio (147 to 80), but he makes up for it as a fabulous on-ball defender who leads the Cats with 49 steals. He had 10 points, on 4-for-12 shooting, as well four rebounds and six assists in the first meeting, but also four turnovers. Over the past three games, Gilgeous-Alexander has averaged 16.3 points, 8.3 rebounds and 5.6 assists. Over the last four games (all wins), he's rarely come off the floor (37.5 minutes per). He's playing the best basketball of what figures to be his only collegiate season, just in time to pay a visit on some old friends.
STUFF (Need-to-Know Info)
ABOUT THE GATORS: It'll be "Senior Day," which means the O'Dome swansong performance for a couple very popular players, and another cursed by the injury bug during his three UF seasons. Senior point guardChris Chiozza and graduate transfer Egor Koulechov will have to play well for the Gators to defeat the Wildcats. UF's third senior, center John Egbunu, out since suffering a knee injury Feb. 14, 2017, will make the pre-game walk to center court, as well. UF may be headed for the NCAA Tournament, but the 6-foot-11, 255-pound Egbunu will miss his third consecutive postseason. He tore ligaments in his thumb in the final week of the 2016 regular season and sat out the NIT; he missed the NCAA run to the Elite Eight in '17; and now will miss wherever the Gators wind up in the coming weeks. ... The seniors' career stats: Chiozza -- 981 points, 432 rebounds, 547 assists; Koulechov (at UF) -- 412 points, 197 rebounds, 40.7 from 3-point range; Egbunu 578 points, 378 rebounds, 84 blocks. ... Chiozza needs just one assist to break the career record in that category currently held by Erving Walker (2008-12). He will break the record despite starting less than half of the games of his career (61 of 134 to date). Walker started 113 of his 144 games. ... Though Koulechov ranks third in SEC play in 3-point percentage (.428), he made just one in the win at Alabama and, instead, went 6-for-7 inside the arc, scoring mostly on drives. ... UF, already down with injuries to their "bigs," will be without redshirt freshman center Dontay Bassett, who started the last two games, but suffered a concussion against Alabama. ... Florida has shot just 55.6 percent from the free-throw line over the previous five games, with its high-game topping out at 63.6 percent (7-for-11 at Vanderbilt). ... The star of the win at Bama was swingman Jalen Hudson, who shredded the Crimson Tide for 27 points, hit nine of his 13 attempts, plus three of five 3-pointers. He was on the prowl for offense, which was fine with UF coach Mike White, who has simplified some things in the halfcourt and freed his players to become a little more creative. ... Shooting guard KeVaughn Allen scored just 37 points over a five-game stretch during which the Gators won twice. The last two games, he's equaled that point total and been on the attack, which has absolutely delighted his team. ... UF didn't get much tangible production from its front court last time out, aside from forward Keith Stone (8 points, 3 rebounds), but sure did get high effort on defense. The Gators figure to need some points from Kevarrius Hayes, who scored nine, grabbed nine rebounds and had two steals in the win at Lexington. ... ABOUT THE WILDCATS: They're playing better (much, much better) than a few weeks ago, which can only be chalked up to what has become a very familiar timeline that applies to Coach John Calipari's freshmen-dominated teams: They start figuring things out later in the season and usually hit their peak in time for the postsason. ... Since losing four straight in SEC play, the Wildcats have beaten Alabama by 10, smashed a good and surging Arkansas team by 15 on the road, then defeated likely NCAA-bound Missouri by 21, and last-place Ole Miss by 18, both at home. Over those four games, UK has averaged 87.7 points while shooting 48.3 percent from the floor and 45.4 from the 3-point line. Those are startling numbers, given how the Cats struggled to score the ball the first half of the season, including the first meeting against the Gators. ... Gilgeous-Alexander is the guy who's making them go these days, but forward Kevin Knox, another one-and-done being projected as Kevin Knoxan NBA lottery pick, has been the most consistent of the young Cats this season. Knox will enjoy a homecoming of sorts, having starred at Tampa Catholic. He's shooting 45 percent from the floor, 35.5 from 3 and 77.5 from the free-throw line. The offense goes through Alexander and Knox, which is an adjustment Calipari has made of late. ... Calipari also has tweaked his starting lineup. While he starts forward Nick Richards, freshman PJ Washington (10.3 ppg, 4.3 rpg), one of four 2017 McDonald's All-Americans on the squad, gets the bulk of minutes at the "4" spot. Washington is a 50-percent shooter, but not a long-ball threat (just 4 3s all season on 20 attempts). ... Guard Hamidou Diallo has been wildly inconsistent (just 42 percent floor, 34.3 from deep), but he's capable of a big offensive game. ... Since returning from a leg injury in January, forward Jared Vanderbilt has provided a huge lift off the bench: 5.8 points and a team-high 8.0 rebounds. He's a junkyard dog on the glass and a reason the Cats have become a much better offensive rebounding team in the second half of the season. ... Combo guard Quade Green (10.2 ppg), another McDonald's guy, is better offensive player than what he showed in the first meeting (1-for-8 from the floor, 0-for-4 from distance). After Wednesday's defeat of Ole Miss, Green turned his attention to the Gators and told reporters in Lexington, "Now we gotta go to Florida and spank 'em."
STATS (Some Numbers of Note)
UF needs "Aggressive KeVaughn" Allen to show up against the Wildcats.
* .000 —Koulechov's field-goal percentage in his first game against Kentucky. "3Gor" went 0-for-8 at Rupp Arena, including 0-for-5 from the arc, and finished with just two points. But he grabbed nine rebounds and had a huge late-game block to help ice the win.
* .782 — Calipari's winning percentage in conference play over his nine seasons at Kentucky, based on a 119-33 record. His UK teams are 7-14 against Florida, but only 4-4 in Gainesville.
* 1 — Times during the SEC season that Allen has attempted at least 10 shots in three consecutive games. After taking 15 against Auburn and 12 at Alabama, he has a chance to do it for a second time, assuming he takes to heart his coaches' and teammates encouragement/pleas to remain aggressive on the offensive end.
* 21 — UF's ranking in adjusted defensive efficiency, according to KenPom advance metrics. That's second in the SEC behind Alabama. Amazingly, that's better than where the Gators rate in adjusted offensive efficiency (45th, fifth in the SEC). Quite a contrast from where this team was in November to now.
* 1988 — The first year Florida swept Kentucky in the regular season, an annual series dating to the founding of the SEC in 1933. The Wildcats went 27-6 that season and won the SEC title, but the seeds of what would be a nasty NCAA scandal that ultimately brought down Coach Eddie Sutton (and eventually paved the way for the hiring of New York Knicks coach Rick Pitino) were growing. The Gators, coached then by Norm Sloan (and smack in the middle of a brewing NCAA scandal, as well) won 58-56 at Lexington on Jan. 20, and a month later defeated the Wildcats 83-76 in Gainesville.
STATEMENT (Random thought)
About 10 days ago, on-the-ledge Florida fans wondered if the Gators would win another game this season. What a finish it would be if they can take care of business at home against the surging and rival Wildcats. And what a home ending it would make for a certain point guard.
