Once again playing without their star center in Colin Castleton the Florida Gators will have a difficult challenge ahead of them Wednesday when they take on the Kentucky Wildcats.
This will be the second meeting of the two teams who matchup up on February 4th with the Wildcats coming away with a 72-67 win. Kentucky led comfortably for much of this game but Florida surged back in the final minutes to make things close, though it was too little, too late.
Entering Wednesday’s game the Gators sit at 14-13 on the season and 7-7 in the SEC, currently 8th in the conference. Kentucky is 18-9 and 9-5 in the SEC, currently 4th in the league. While the season has been unkind to the Gators and they find themselves well outside of the NCAA Tournament picture they’re not all that far behind Auburn who is 5th in the league at 8-6. While the idea of the Gators going for a run in the SEC Tournament might seem daunting without Colin Castleton, a decent seed could do wonders as they fight for their season.
Normally when the Gators see Kentucky they’re seeing a team with Final Four aspirations, but that isn’t the case this year. The Wildcats have been up and down and have largely lived on the bubble–though a recent win over Tennessee has been huge for their resume. As of February 20th Bracket Matrix, a composite of the top bracketologists in the game, has Kentucky as a 10-seed. That is far from a position where they can feel comfortable and they’d certainly like to improve their fate so this will be a hungry team on Wednesday. In recent years there hasn’t been many times where the Wildcats have had to play with desperation but right now they’re in that situation and the Gators will have to contend with a team that’s not only talented, but motivated.
Since the first meeting between the two teams Kentucky has gone 2-2, including a bad loss to Mike White and the Georgia Bulldogs that was a huge blow to their resume. Luckily they were able to bounce back, taking down Mississippi State on the road and then landing one of their biggest wins of the season beating Tennessee.
One of the biggest changes between how Kentucky played against the Gators at the beginning of the month to now is the emergence of Chris Livingston, a freshman wing. He was quiet against the Gators with 4 points, but since then has become a key cog in Kentucky’s offense. The Akron native scored 13 points against Arkansas, 13 against Mississippi State, and 12 against Tennessee, among the team’s leaders in each of those games. At 6’6” and 220 pounds he’s a muscular wing and Kentucky has made an effort to get him the ball going downhill and once he gets momentum towards the rim he’s hard to stop. Livingston has also been forceful on the glass both offensively and defensively and it’s made him a valuable piece for the Wildcats.
Of course, the Wildcats are still led by the returning player of the year in college basketball Oscar Tshiebwe who is averaging 16 points and 13 rebounds per game, helping the Wildcats have the 17th ranked offense in the country according to KenPom’s adjusted offensive efficiency metric. Coach John Calipari’s offense has faced a lot of criticism this year for being stagnant, and while sometimes their first shot offense isn’t pretty, their outstanding work on the offensive glass allows them to get multiple bites at the apple on each possession and it has netted out as an efficient scoring attack. Kentucky is currently 3rd in the country in offense rebounding rate and that’s going to be a major concern for the Gators who have struggled controlling the glass even with Colin Castleton and now find themselves undersized and thin in the frontcourt.
One area the Wildcats have been vulnerable is on the defensive end which is uncharacteristic for a John Calipari coached team. A big reason why is that opponents have figured out that Tshiebwe struggles to guard ball screens and can be targeted–and teams that have come in with gameplans of how to attack him have been successful. The Wildcats are 87th in the country in adjusted defensive efficiency and that has really been where their struggles this year have centered around, and there is a chance the Gators could have success isolating Tshiebwe and putting the Wildcats in uncomfortable rotations.
If the Gators are going to find a way to win they’ll need another big game from freshman wing Riley Kugel who has been outstanding in recent games. Kentucky has good size and athleticism on the wing and to match up with that you need a similar caliber athlete and Kugel is just that. He just led the way for the Gators against Arkansas with 17 points where he used his explosiveness and creativity to get to the rim at will and he’ll need to do that again on Wednesday.
Florida’s season might be in a rough spot but they’ll have the chance to play spoiler against a Kentucky team that’s trying to stay in the NCAA Tournament field. The players know the season isn’t over and they will have opportunities to extend the season so they’ll come into Wednesday’s game excited to compete.
This game will take place February 22nd at 7 PM ET and will be televised on either ESPN or ESPN 2.