By Keith Taylor
Special to NKyTribune
Kentucky isn’t at its best right now and it showed Saturday night in Gainesville.
The eighth-ranked Wildcats trailed from start to finish and suffered their first double-digit loss of the year with an 88-66 setback to No. 24 Florida. It was the third loss in the past four games for the Wildcats, a trend that began following an 82-80 loss to Tennessee on Jan. 24 in Knoxville.
“At the end of the day, we know how they can play because we’ve all seen it,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said. “Now we see them at their worst. OK, now it’s a choice — do you want to be at your worst, do you want to be at your best?”
Calipari admitted he knew there was “an issue” following the loss to the unranked Volunteers. The loss to the Gators was Kentucky’s largest defeat while ranked in the Top 10 since 1992. Ironically, that loss (at Tennessee) also was by a 22-point margin.
“Sometimes you’ve got to hit rock bottom (to climb back up to the top),” Calipari said. “Maybe we have hit rock bottom and maybe we haven’t hit rock bottom.”
Counting Kentucky’s loss, six teams in the Associated Press Top 10 suffered defeats Saturday, while No. 19 South Carolina ascended to the top of the Southeastern Conference standings with a one-game lead over the Wildcats (18-5, 8-2) and Gators (18-5, 8-2) with eight conference games remaining in the regular season.
BOXSCORE: Florida 88, Kentucky 66
Kentucky got 19 points from point-guard De’Aaron Fox who returned to the lineup after sitting out last week’s 91-80 overtime win over Georgia. Fox didn’t start, but came off the bench and led the Wildcats with 19 points. Fox played 25 minutes and failed to record an assist.
Fox admitted it “was kind of difficult” playing in his first game in a week but offered no excuses.
“(My) legs weren’t under me, but people play through sickness and I’m back now,” he said. “I’m not going to make any excuse. … They jumped on us from the start and never looked back.”
Malik Monk was held scoreless in the first half, but did all of his scoring in the second half and finished with 11 points.
The final tally was Kentucky’s lowest scoring output of the season. The Wildcats shot just 38 percent from the field and managed just six 3-pointers on 18 attempts. Kentucky shot just 30 percent in the first half and scored a season-low 26 points in the opening half.
Despite the poor outing in the first frame, Kentucky trailed by just eight at the break at 34-26, but the Gators shot a blistering 67 percent in the second half to pull away from Kentucky in the final half.
“Florida outplayed us (and) outcoached us,” Calipari said. “They did everything sideways. It was a great environment. The new building looks great. They deserved to win. They wanted it worse than we wanted it, or at least it appeared that way.”
Kentucky also got out rebounded 54-29 by Florida, which scored 17 second-chance points, compared to just seven for the Wildcats.
“We were missing a lot of shots and they were grabbing rebounds,” Fox said. “And we couldn’t grab rebounds because they weren’t missing. They beat us (and) they killed us on the boards today and that’s probably why they won the game, mainly.”
Calipari agreed.
“They just beat us — beat us to every ball,” he said.
Despite the loss, Calipari is optimistic his team will get back on track with eight games remaining in the regular season.
“We gotta get back into what we have to do and be real specific with them and then hold them accountable,” he said. “I mean, if they’re playing defense like that they think that’s acceptable and that comes back to me.”
Gametracker: LSU at Kentucky, 7 p.m., Tuesday. TV/Radio: ESPN, 98.1 FM WBUL.
Keith Taylor is a senior sports writer for KyForward, where he primarily covers University of Kentucky sports. Reach him at keith.taylor@kyforward.com or @keithtaylor21 on Twitter