Last season, Kentucky saw Otega Oweh return to face his former team when the Cats visited Oklahoma. Earlier this season, it was Mo Dioubate, who returned to Tuscaloosa to face Alabama.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, it will be Denzel Aberdeen making a return to his former school when No. 25 Kentucky visits 14th-ranked Florida in Gainesville. Aberdeen played three seasons for the Gators, including last year when Florida won the national championship.<\/p>\n
Kentucky head coach Mark Pope discussed Aberdeen\u2019s return to Gainesville during his Thursday press conference. The UK head man is not concerned about how Aberdeen will be affected.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think D.A. is pretty steady right now,\u201d Pope said. \u201cHis play over the last month has been phenomenal. He\u2019s had huge number games. He went on a four or five-game tear where his numbers were just outrageous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the last nine games, Aberdeen has been a steady part of the UK attack. He\u2019s averaging 14.3 points per game during the current streak, including a season-high 22-point effort at Tennessee in January. Aberdeen also leads the team in assists (29) over the last nine games. The senior\u2019s play has contributed to Kentucky winning eight of the nine games during this span.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can see him making the transition from doing his job to playing the game,\u201d Pope said. \u201cFrom doing the game to playing the game. We\u2019ve seen that happen in real time over the last month where, in practice too now, you see him feeling so comfortable with what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for returning to Florida on Saturday, Pope does not worry about how Aberdeen will respond.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just a solid dude. He\u2019s a competitor, competitor, competitor,\u201d Pope said. \u201cThe brighter the lights, the more excited he gets and he functions well there. So, I expect him, as the season progresses, to just get better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kentucky and Florida are set for a 3 p.m. ET tipoff and the game can be seen on ABC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last season, Kentucky saw Otega Oweh return to face his former team when the Cats visited Oklahoma. Earlier…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[589,28,30,29,13769,16379],"class_list":["post-156341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-featured","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-headlines","tag-men-s-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}