LEXINGTON, Ky. — No one knows when they're coming, only that they are coming. If the visiting team is really good (or lucky), it may only have to withstand one or two "Rupp Runs" over the course of a Kentucky home basketball game.
Surviving them is all in the response, which usually means scoring.
"The crowd here doesn't get really, really into it until they go on that run," Florida senior center Kevarrius Hayes said Saturday. "It takes true poise to gather yourselves."
Better than poise, it takes points. When the No. 6 Wildcats made their move in the second half, the Gators had no offensive answers, going seven minutes without a field goal, and eventually falling 66-57 in in the regular-season finale for both teams in front of a crowd of 24,456 at sold-out Rupp Arena.
Freshman guard Tyler Herro scored 16 points, with a half-dozen coming during UK's 15-2 spurt that erased a one-point deficit six minutes after intermission and sent the Wildcats to a comfortable double-digit lead that was never threatened. Forward PJ Washington had 15 points and nine rebounds, with his old-fashion 3-point play providing the go-ahead points and sending the home crowd into a tizzy that its team instantly fed on. Freshman point guard Ashton Hagans added 14 points, as did backup freshman guard Keldon Johnson.
The Gators (17-14, 9-9), which lost for the eighth time against nine ranked opponents this season, dropped a third straight and now likely need a winning streak of some kind in next week's Southeastern Conference Tournament at Nashville, Tenn. — UF will be the No. 8 seed and play Arkansas (17-14, 8-10) in Thursday's second-round action — to impress the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee enough for an at-large berth to be extended.
The coach on the other sidelines at Rupp was impressed enough.
"Florida is an NCAA Tournament team," Kentucky coach John Calipari said afterward.
Told of that remark, UF coach Mike White had this: "I would say the committee needs to respect Coach Caliperi's opinion. He's a really, really smart guy."
With a really, really big, and really, really good team; especially on defense. The Gators, who have struggled to score all season, and even more so against longer, more physical inside opponents, played over their heads in keeping the game close for nearly 30 minutes before the Wildcats (26-5, 13-3), their size and famous home-court advantage took control.
Kentucky's Tyler Herro drives on Florida's Andrew Nembhard.
Florida led by one after a terrific first half when it shot 48 percent. The Gators were up 40-39 after a Hayes basket with 13:41 to go when Washington made his key basket and Hagans followed it with a pair of free throws for a four-point lead. UF redshirt freshman forward Isaiah Stokes worked for a bucket down low and had a chance for a three-point play that would have cut the lead to just one, but missed the free throw.
Instead, the margin remained momentarily at two, when Kentucky's behemoths started having their way in the paint. UK scored six consecutive points on free throws — the Cats shot 32 to the Gators' 11 — then got a floater from Herro, a turn-around bank shot from Washington, then another driving teardrop from Herro to go up, 54-42, with just under six minutes left.
"I wish we could have done something to break up their run," UF fifth-year senior swingman Jalen Hudson said.
Instead, while that 10-0 spree was going on, UF missed five straight shots and also had a turnover. By the time Hayes converted a three-point play with 4:47 to go, the Kentucky advantage was still nine and the Gators had gone nearly seven minutes without a field goal.
"Was it that long?" Hudson asked of the drought.
Yes, it was.
"Man, we fought them, but their size really hurt us," he continued. "It was a low-scoring game, so all those fouls and them getting in the bonus early was detrimental to us."
So was 3-for-18 shooting from the 3-point line. Offensively, after a very sound first half, the Gators' got a season-high 17 points, plus five rebounds and three blocked shots from Hayes, who was 8-for-9 from the floor. Their perimeter shot-making, however, went dark. Hudson was six of 16 overall, but 0-for-5 from the 3-point line. Point guard Andrew Nembhard was 1-for-8, though he did have eight assists to just one turnover in as hostile an environment as the freshman has faced this season.
Meanwhiile, the shooting slump of leading scorer KeVaughn Allen continued, even in a rare game that White tried to bring him off the bench as a spark. Allen scored just three points over 24 minutes, finishing one of six from the floor to run his total of the previous five games to 8-for-42, including just three of 21 from the 3-point line.
Theirs was a collective clanging of jumpers.
"You might say, 'Oh they missed a bunch of wide-open shots,' but we missed a bunch of altered and contested shots," White said. "Defensively, they are elite."
Yet, UF still shot a respectable 44.4 percent for the game, outscored the Cats 32-22 in the paint and only turned the ball over six times. The numbers, though, weren't so good in the rebounding column, where UK won 39-23, or at the free-throw line, where the Gators were out-pointed, 32-11, by a home team that converted 81 percent from the line, compared to UF's measly 6-for-11 and 54 percent.
"Seven minutes is a long time" to go without scoring," Hayes said. "We were struggling. I felt like we had to slow down a little bit and really try to execute, but their defense sped us up."
Rupp (and the team that plays there) have been known to do that.
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