After two slowdown games, Kentucky basketball must shift gears in rematch with Florida
If a college basketball team has any chance of having any postseason success, it must learn how to shift gears.
It can’t play one way. Not all the time. Teams that play fast will run into an opponent that wants to slow them down. Teams that play a slower tempo will run into an opponent that wants to speed them up. It’s the nature of the beast.
“Especially in league play,” UK assistant Chuck Martin said on Tuesday.
Indeed, the Cats have recently run into such a scenario. One of the nation’s highest-scoring teams, Kentucky encountered a South Carolina team that made John Calipari’s club play at a more deliberate pace. The results were not pretty. Carolina won 79-62. Then last Saturday in Fayetteville, Arkansas lured the Cats into a low-scoring, possession-by-possession pace. That time, UK produced a better outcome with a 63-57 win.
Now Florida visits Rupp Arena on Wednesday night. And in what gear do the Gators operate? Much like Kentucky, Todd Golden’s team loves to get the ball up and down the floor. The Gators rank 18th nationally in tempo and eighth in scoring at 85.5 points per game. (Kentucky is fourth at 88.5.) Seven times this year Florida has scored 90 or more points. That includes its most recent outing, a 102-98 overtime win over visiting Georgia on Saturday.
So how tough is it for a team, especially one like Kentucky with so much youth, to learn how to play a varying speeds, to learn how to shift gears?
“It’s very tough,” Martin said. “Our young guys have never gone through that before.”
Kentucky won its first meeting with Florida, beating the Gators 87-85 in Gainesville in the SEC opener on Jan. 6. It wasn’t easy. Florida led 45-37 at the half. Kentucky trailed 76-74 with 3:10 to go before pulling out the victory.
Since then, Florida has won four of six games, including its last three. It lost 103-85 at Ole Miss, whipped Arkansas 90-68 in Gainesville, then lost 85-66 at Tennessee. It picked up a 79-67 road victory at a struggling Missouri, before beating both Mississippi State (79-70) and Georgia at home.
In his latest “Bracketology” update on Tuesday, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi had Kentucky listed as a No. 4 seed for the NCAA Tournament. Lunardi placed Florida in his “next four out” category. And currently 39th in the NCAA Net rankings, including an 0-6 mark in Quad 1 games, the Gators could use a win at Rupp.
“They’re No. 2 in the country in offensive rebounding,” Martin said of the Gators. “They have great size and do a great job of of positioning themselves on the low block.”
The Gators swamped Georgia 46-25 on the glass on the way to building a 21-point lead (68-47) in the second half before a furious Georgia rally carried the game to overtime. There, Florida scored 17 points in the extra five minutes.
Micah Handlogten, Florida’s 7-foot-1 center who transferred in from Marshall, scored 23 points and grabbed 17 rebounds. Guards Zyon Pullin (20 points), Will Richard (18) and Walter Clayton (18) combined for 56 points. Florida shot 54.9% from the field for the game.
In that first game with Kentucky, Handlogten snared 12 rebounds as Florida won the boards battle 43-40. Clayton and Pullin each scored 23 points that afternoon. Riley Kugel came off the bench to score 15 points. Antonio Reeves led Kentucky with 19 points while Tre Mitchell grabbed 10 rebounds.
“When you see them for the second time, obviously we’ve gotten better and they’ve gotten better,” Martin said.
Kentucky has been working to improve its defense. After falling to 96th in kenpom’s adjusted defensive efficiency, the Cats jumped up to 70th after the win at Arkansas.
“We didn’t play great offensively, but it was good to see us defensively come together, especially in the second half,” Martin said of the win over the Razorbacks. “There were signs of our defense really coming along. It was a great example of what we can be defensively.”
And UK’s defense will get another test on Wednesday. At a different speed.
