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Florida Gators 50, Kentucky Wildcats 67: 31-0 With A Bullet

Kentucky won their 31st consecutive game against Florida today in Rupp Arena.

By Glenn Logan
Mark Zerof-USA TODAY Sports

As most everyone expected, the Florida Gators were not ready to come into Rupp Arena and take out the undefeated Kentucky Wildcats. Make no mistake, the Gators did try, and certainly played a competitive basketball game for 30+ minutes before the depth, power, and size of Kentucky wore them down to a routine victim of an undefeated and historic Kentucky team.

This was a good effort by the Florida Gators, who have significantly underachieved this season compared to expectations. But the Gators have begun getting better, and if they can stay together until next season, there is a really good chance that they will be back to their usually daunting selves, and make next season a very, very interesting one in the SEC. Nice effort by Florida.

Final stats

Observations

  • Turnovers in the first half enabled Florida to stay in the game. Lack of turnovers in the second half is what enabled Kentucky to win convincingly.

  • Kentucky did not shoot the ball particularity well, but they were good enough for a home game. 3-point shooting was disappointing, and I think UK took far too few threes. Some of that was Florida's defense, but a lot of it was not very good offense.  Still, I approve of the way the constantly went inside against Florida's undersized front line.

  • Interior passing today was the best I have seen since the Suffocats, who were the best I have ever seen at it by any team ever. This year's team is beginning to give them a run for their money.

  • Missed layups are still a problem. Somehow, we have to solve that.

  • There was some great passing in the second half from everywhere. It was great to watch.

  • Kentucky had some great defensive possessions, and some head-scratchingly bad ones. I'd like to see them tighten that up.

  • UK did a great job turning Florida over.

  • Kentucky did a very good job on the offensive glass, but could've done much better. At least 3 rebounds Kentucky should've had were lost.

  • Eight steals. Outstanding.

  • Free throw shooting was fine. A lot of people had one miss, and Willie had more than one, but that's okay. Dakari did not miss any.

  • Nine assists on 25 made baskets (36%) is just okay. I think a lot of that was due to the number of baskets off turnovers, OR's and in transition. I thought UK passed the ball pretty well today.

  • 31-0. That's a wonderful thing. Think about this — many of us believed we would be in this position last season. We were only off 365 days.

This wasn't a great game as Kentucky games go, but it was good enough. The Wildcats were less efficient on offense than we'd like to see, but I thought the defense was very good overall.

Well, it's on to the NCAA Tournament, where the Wildcats will be the #1 seed. No matter what happens there, Kentucky will almost certainly be the #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. They are virtually certainly to be a #1 seed even if they lose their first SECT game by 50.

How's that for the CATbird seat, Big Blue Nation?

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