Florida sold out the O Dome for the Kentucky game
Kentucky Basketball won’t wait long for its first hostile environment in the Southeastern Conference. Right away, the Wildcats travel to Florida for the league opener on Saturday, January 6, to play the three-loss Gators in Exactech Arena.
Still known as the O’Dome by traditionalists, Florida’s home arena is officially sold out for the Gators versus the Wildcats. Tickets to the game must have been popular Christmas presents around Gainesville because the sell-out was announced earlier today, the day after Christmas, at around 9 a.m.
I hope some of you Kentucky fans bought up some of those 10,133 seats, too.
Some good news for the Wildcats, though. Kentucky has owned Gainesville lately, winning five straight in the building formerly known as the O’Connell Center.
Last season, Kentucky won at Florida, 82-74, powered by Oscar Tshiebwe‘s 25-point but only four-rebound night. Tshiebwe also joined Kentucky’s 1,000-point club in the game, while Jacob Toppin added 19 points and 11 rebounds in Kentucky’s third straight February win.
In Tshiebwe’s other trip to Florida, he scored 27 points with 15 rebounds in a 71-63 victory, one of Tshiebwe’s 28 double-doubles in the 2021-22 season. The Wildcats never trailed in that game.
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In 2020-21, Kentucky held the Gators to 58 points in Gainesville, winning 76-58 in Keion Brooks‘ first game of the season. Brooks missed the first nine games of the year and returned to the lineup to score 12 points as UK’s only returning player from the year prior. BJ Boston and Davion Mintz each scored 13 in the win, one of only nine wins all season.
You remember the game in March of 2020, the regular season finale before the postseason was canceled. EJ Montgomery‘s late tip-in of Keion Brooks’ miss with 11 seconds to go gave Kentucky its first lead and the game its final score. The Wildcats won their last game together, 71-70.
The five-game win streak began in 2018-19 when Kentucky erased an 11-point second-half deficit to win by 11. Tyler Herro scored a game-high 19 points and hit a dagger 3-pointer in the state he’d soon call home.
Make it six in a row on the sixth?
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