Three takeaways from Kentucky basketball’s sweep of the Florida Gators
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Game day: No. 7 Kentucky 71, Florida 63
Click below for more of the Herald-Leader’s and Kentucky.com’s coverage of Saturday’s men’s basketball game between Kentucky and Florida in Gainesville, Fla.
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Three takeaways from Kentucky basketball’s 71-63 victory over the Florida Gators in Gainesville on Saturday:
1. Oscar Tshiebwe is the machine
During the CBS telecast, analyst Clark Kellogg — Kellogg > Pete Gillen, by the way — mentioned several times that in the network’s pregame prep interview, UK head coach John Calipari said he wanted his Wildcats to play like a machine. No highs or lows. No emotion. Just even-keeled. Just like a machine.
Kentucky has a machine, alright. The machine’s name is Oscar Tshiebwe. Kentucky’s center has been the same, consistent, overpowering, dominating Oscar Tshiebwe game after game, night after night. And Kentucky’s Big O did it again Saturday, scoring 27 points and grabbing 14 rebounds for his 13 straight double-double and 25th overall of the season.
Not that this was new, of course. In UK’s 78-57 thumping of the visiting Gators back on Feb. 12, Tshiebwe scored 27 points with 19 rebounds. The Gators didn’t have an answer for the 6-9 center in Rupp, nor did they in the friendly confines of the O-Dome. Tshiebwe was 11 of 16 from the floor and a perfect five of five from the foul line on Saturday. He gathered 10 offensive rebounds in the game in Lexington. He collected 11 offensive rebounds in the game in Gainesville.
When Florida started the second half on a 5-0 run to slice UK’s lead to 38-31 at the 18:41 mark, Calipari called timeout. His message: Throw the ball to Oscar. Request received. Tshiebwe promptly scored four straight baskets and converted an and-one free throw on the fourth. Suddenly, UK was back in control, up 47-33.
“It’s just kind of normal for us,” teammate Jacob Toppin said when asked about Tshiebwe’s performance.
“I’ll be surprised, but I’ve been surprised before,” said Calipari when asked if he could envision anyone else but Oscar winning national player of the year honors. “The things he’s done haven’t been done in 50 years.”
And Oscar keeps on doing them with machine-like efficiency.
2. Kentucky looked better on the defensive end
The Cats beat Ole Miss 83-72 at Rupp last Tuesday despite the fact that the Rebels shot 50 percent from the floor. That number sounded the alarm, bringing attention to the way Calipari’s club had played recently on the defensive end. Slippage, in other words. Postgame on Tuesday, Cal and his players mentioned the need to refocus on that end of the floor.
So how did the Cats do? Florida entered the game shooting 42.9 percent from the floor. The Gators shot 41 percent Saturday. Florida entered the game shooting just 31.6 percent from three-point range. The Gators shot 15 percent Saturday. In fact, after shooting a tepid 5-for-22 from behind the stripe in the first meeting with Kentucky, Mike White’s club was a miserable 3-for-20 on Saturday. Combined numbers for the two games: 8-for-42 for 19 percent.
“Since the last game, we’ve been talking so much about defense,” Toppin said. “We established that we needed to get back to playing better defense. Overall, I thought we got back to the way we’ve been playing defense.”
Calipari’s take: “I thought we really guarded until the last two minutes of the game, when we didn’t want to foul.”
Florida ended up averaging 0.991 points per possession, compared to UK’s 1.116. That’s the lowest PPP by a UK foe since the Gators averaged 0.969 in Lexington.
3. Saturday was a Sunshine State tune-up
So the regular stuff is now out of the way. Kentucky is 25-6 overall and 14-4 in the SEC. And in four days, the Cats will be making a return trip to the Sunshine State for the SEC Men’s Basketball Tournament in Tampa. As the No. 3 seed, UK will play Friday at approximately 8:30 p.m. at Amalie Arena.
In his postgame Zoom, Calipari said he was giving the team the rest of Saturday night off, all of Sunday off and all of Monday off. He said if players want to come in and shoot and do some things on Monday, that’s fine. But there won’t be a scheduled practice until Tuesday. After Wednesday’s practice, the team will fly to Tampa, where it will practice on Thursday as it awaits to see who it plays on Friday.
Remember, this team has battled injury issues all season. Most recent example: Daimion Collins was unavailable Saturday because of a shoulder injury. TyTy Washington appeared to have had his ankle stepped on yet again. The freshman guard hopped around a little, but seemed fine. Still, this team could use some downtime to assure one and all are as healthy as possible for tournament time.
Speaking of tournament time, is this team ready?
Here, we defer to Oscar, “I think we are good to go into the tournaments.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2022 at 5:48 PM.
