Florida will try to slow Kentucky down in tonight's rematch

It’s been 25 days since Kentucky opened SEC play with an 87-85 win at Florida. The Cats trailed the Gators by seven around the 12-minute mark, but a three by Aaron Bradshaw with 1:23 to play and six straight free throws by Reed Sheppard in the final 20 seconds gave Kentucky its first SEC win of the season. Since then, both teams have gone 4-2, with the Cats losing at Texas A&M and South Carolina, and Florida falling at Ole Miss and Tennessee.

Yesterday, Florida head coach Todd Golden met with the media to preview the rematch in Rupp Arena. He said that despite the loss, he liked how his team played against the Cats earlier this month.

“I’m going to blow your mind. We actually guarded them well enough to win the first time we played. We really did. They scored late after fouling a little bit, but we held them to like their third- or fourth-worst offensive performance of the year in here. So it was really our offense, specifically in the second half, that I thought let us down a little bit.”

Tonight, Golden said Florida will focus on setting the tempo to slow Kentucky down in hopes of limiting fastbreak opportunities.

“Our transition defense is going to be the first thing, the first box we have to check to give ourselves a chance to win. If we’re letting them play in transition on their home floor it’s going to be a bad formula for us. They’re a fantastic offense and they’re even better in transition. So making them run against a set defense, and the first time we played them that was our big advantage.

“We were able to execute offensively in the halfcourt,” Golden added. “On the defensive end, they kind of carved us in transition, but we did a good job against them in halfcourt. We held them to under a point per possession, which is hard to do against them. So I think pace and whoever is dictating that is going to be a big part of this game.”

Kentucky’s offense still ranks in the top ten nationally but has sputtered a bit in recent games, most notably at South Carolina last week. Golden hopes that by forcing a halfcourt game, the Gators can also keep the Rupp Arena crowd in check.

“The thing about Kentucky, it’s just really big,” Golden said of his first time coaching in Rupp last season. “What I remember from last year, we did a decent job of keeping the crowd out of it, but at certain moments when they’d make plays, it would get pretty loud in there. So just trying to dictate tempo, dictate pace, and do a really good job of slowing them down those are kind of things I would point to try and keep the crowd out of the game.”

Florida has won three straight, but that winning streak almost came to an abrupt end Saturday when the Gators blew a 21-point second-half lead and needed overtime to beat Georgia. Florida turned the ball over 19 times and allowed the Bulldogs to score 51 points in the second half on 62% shooting. Golden knows his team can’t afford those same mistakes in Rupp tonight.

“The disappointing thing on Saturday is we just didn’t take care of the ball well in the second half,” Golden said. “We beat the press okay but in the halfcourt, we had some careless turnovers that allowed [Georgia] to get all the way back whereas against Mississippi State, they made a run but we didn’t turn it over and we kept them at six and it didn’t really get so tight. Obviously, Saturday got really tight.”

Kentucky’s defense took a step forward on Saturday vs. Arkansas. With potentially a full roster for the very first time this season, they’ll have another opportunity to improve tonight against a Florida that’s still prone to miscues.