Florida men's basketball coach Mike White greets Kentucky coach John Calipari before their teams' Feb. 4 game in Gainesville, which the host Gators won 88-66. The teams meet again Saturday in Lexington with the top seed for the SEC tournament at stake.The pairing and locale of the biggest Southeastern Conference regular-season men's basketball game this winter should come as no surprise.
Florida and Kentucky will play Saturday at Rupp Arena in Lexington, with CBS televising the 2 p.m. matchup of teams with identical 23-5 overall records and 13-2 league marks. This is the eighth consecutive season in which the Gators or Wildcats will capture at least a share of the SEC title, with that fact assured due to the first-place tandem being three games clear of South Carolina and Arkansas in the standings with three games remaining.
"I think we can go up there and, if we play really well, have a chance to win," Florida second-year coach Mike White said in his news conference after Tuesday night's 81-66 defeat of South Carolina. "I do. I think that. I think our guys think that, but everybody has got to be a little bit better."
The Gators should be confident after winning nine consecutive games, including an 88-66 thumping of the Wildcats in Gainesville on Feb. 4. Senior guard Kasey Hill had the top game of his Florida career with 21 points, six assists and five rebounds, and the Gators racked up 54 rebounds to just 29 by Kentucky.
Redshirt junior center John Egbunu had seven of those rebounds for Florida, but he suffered a season-ending ACL injury 10 days later at Auburn and will miss the rematch.
The Wildcats have won five straight games since the drubbing at Florida - their other four losses (to UCLA, Louisville, Tennessee and Kansas) have come by a combined 16 points - but they haven't always looked imposing. The latest example was Tuesday night's 72-62 win at Missouri, where freshman forward Bam Adebayo tallied 22 points and a season-high 15 rebounds but the rest of the roster looked mediocre.
"We've got some holes, and most of that is because of a lack of confident players," Kentucky coach John Calipari said in his news conference Tuesday night. "Now is not the time to be antsy. That comes when you know that if you lose, your season is over.
"That's not now, so why are we playing this way?"
The Wildcats hold a commanding 99-38 series lead over Florida, but their edge is just 15-14 since March 2005. Since the Gators won consecutive national championships in 2006 and 2007, they have won just once at Rupp - in 2014, when both programs reached the Final Four.
"We're going to come out with intensity," Adebayo told reporters after Tuesday night's game. "We're going to have fun, and we'll see where this thing goes."
Said White: "It will be difficult, and everybody's better at home. It's a difficult challenge. It will be a high-level basketball game."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.