No. 1 seed within reach as Florida starts hot, holds off Kentucky
It was only three weeks ago when Florida first played Kentucky this season. Both teams were hot then, and the game was competitive down into the final minutes in Gainesville, with Florida muscling it out.
A visit to Rupp Arena to end the regular season, with the Wildcats fighting for a bye through the first two rounds of the SEC tournament — should be competitive, right? No. 5 Florida won with all five of its starters scoring at least 11, though Saturday brought greater competition than most of its recent bouts. This time, it was a lights-out first half and a Kentucky comeback that birthed an 84-77 victory. But beyond the final five minutes, the game never felt balanced.
“First half, we played about as well as you could hope coming into a place like this,” Florida coach Todd Golden said. “We did a great job getting off to a great start.”
Florida threw the first punch with an 11-0 run in the first two and a half minutes, and Kentucky coach Mark Pope opted for a quick timeout. ESPN’s 2 p.m. game hadn’t even ended at that point, so many watched that burst through the top-right scorebox. To provide proof of concept, the Gators rattled off another 13-0 sprint late in the first half and entered halftime up 17.
Kentucky’s Otega Oweh and Denzel Aberdeen, a man Florida (25-6, 16-2 in the Southeastern Conference) knows well, combined for 43. Specifically, Aberdeen’s 11-point second half gave Florida its strongest shove since January. The Gators seemed off balance, even, as they fouled both Oweh and Aberdeen while each was lobbing desperation threes in the final minutes. But Florida caught a break when officials missed guard Urban Klavzar stepping out of bounds while passing to Boogie Fland (who Kentucky subsequently fouled). The Wildcats (19-12, 10-8) couldn’t get back up after that — literal — misstep.
“We just got too complacent. ... It can’t be that way,” Florida forward Thomas Haugh said. He finished with a team-high 20, as usual during his All-American campaign. Fland, who tallied 16, made an addition: “But we came out with a W. That’s what matters.”
And that can be what separates the good and the great at times. Florida has shown an ability to adapt. In turn, all of its preseason goals are within reach.
This whole adaptation is most noticeable in Florida’s work behind the arc, where it shot 44.4% on 18 attempts Saturday. Minus a 36.8% night against Mississippi State on Tuesday — which would have been its best second-best outing through the first two months of the season — Florid ha’s shot above 42% from deep in each of its last five games.
The best three-point shooting squad in the country, Belmont, is hitting 41%.
“He just did a great job picking his spots,” Golden said about Haugh, who went 3 for 6 from deep. All of this is unfathomable when one mentions that only a month ago, Florida was hitting 28.9%, which would’ve been the worst clip of any team to earn a top-three seed ever.
A reality existed in which Florida, even if it just won out, could still earn the final No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament next Sunday. It had won 10 (now 11) straight since losing to Auburn on Jan. 24, with only two wins by fewer than 10 — both against Kentucky. To make up for it, the Gators beat the second and third teams in the SEC, Alabama and Arkansas, by a combined 57 points. They have 12 Quad-1 wins and fall in the top five of every rating system the selection committee references, including No. 4 in the NET.
Then No. 4 UConn lost to Marquette earlier Saturday, and the Gators now should jump the Huskies for that final slot. The No. 4 and No. 5 overall rankings aren’t vastly different, given they will end up in the same corner of the bracket. But facing a No. 4 instead of a No. 3 if one makes it to the Sweet 16 can mean a world of difference.
“Winning out, I feel like, would definitely [earn it],” Golden said on Friday. “We got a lot to work on, though, before we can really plant our flag on that. … A lot can change over the next week.”
Yet beyond maybe Duke, Florida is the hottest team in the country. Its performance Saturday only cemented such with conference tournament week soon underway.
