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Kentucky

John Calipari details Kentucky's late first half collapse

Untitled design (2)by: Sam Gillenwater02/24/23samdg_33
Kentucky HC John Calipari
Andy Lyons | Getty Images

Kentucky picked up their third straight win on Wednesday night with an 82-74 road victory over Florida. However, it didn’t come easily as the Gators had them on the ropes several times, especially heading into halftime.

During media after the game, John Calipari said the 22-6 run for Florida that brought the Wildcats from up 15 to down one at halftime was caused by selfish play. From there, he got his team’s minds right and pointed out the Gator’s need for three-point scoring. Considering their effort in the second half, they did what they needed to do to right the ship and get away with the win.

“Well, we had a couple guys that started going individually,” stated Calipari. “Like when you look like that? You’re not a very good player. The other guy? You’re one of the best players in the country.”

“But, at halftime, I just said they’re going to try to beat us shooting threes. Do you understand that? So, you have to be closer and you must have hands up,” Calipari said. “Make them drivers, make them beat us shooting twos. They needed to shoot threes. They had five at half…They (finished) with three.”

With poor offensive execution from the Wildcats, transition buckets, and threes, Florida completely flipped the first-half script on Kentucky. Even so, UK got things back on track by holding the Gators to only three threes in the second half after giving up three alone in the final minutes of the first half.

This has been a problem for Calipari’s team as of late, though. Florida also went on a 9-0 run over 2:31 of the last four minutes of the game to cut an 11-point Kentucky lead to two. Before that, Tennessee cut a 20-point halftime deficit to eight over 12 minutes and Mississippi State cut a 13-point UK advantage to three in just over four minutes. All were Wildcat wins but all ended up a lot closer than they needed to be.

Still, there’s something to be said about Kentucky closing things out after giving up runs like that. It might make for stressful basketball but, in the end, 3-0 is still 3-0 when it comes to those contests.