{"id":182558,"date":"2026-03-07T23:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T23:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/182558\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T23:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T23:06:07","slug":"kentucky-vs-florida-game-discussion-and-pregame-reading-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/182558\/","title":{"rendered":"Kentucky vs. Florida game discussion and pregame reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aseaofblue.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Kentucky Wildcats<\/a> will take on the <a href=\"https:\/\/floridagators.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Florida Gators<\/a> on Saturday afternoon in Lexington. Game time is set for 4:00 PM ET on ESPN. The Cats are 6.5-point underdogs going into their Senior Day matchup with Florida.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Mark Pope\u2019s squad is now 19-11 as they\u2019re in the midst of their fourth straight season with double-digit losses. Kentucky is 10-7 in conference play, which includes a 92-83 loss in Gainesville, and will end up playing on Wednesday in the SEC Tournament for the first time ever if they fall to the Gators again. And with a loss today, Kentucky will likely end up with just its fifth season in history with 14 losses if they don\u2019t win the SEC or NCAA Tournaments.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">This season has been one to forget, but the Cats did put up a heck of a fight last time they faced off against Florida. The nine-point loss was Florida\u2019s only single-digit win since a loss on January 24th against Auburn.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">However, Kentucky has been so up and down this season that there\u2019s no telling which team will show up\u2014the one who embarrassed the Vanderbilt Commodores at home last Saturday or the one who was embarrassed by the Texas A&amp;M Aggies on the road on Tuesday night (as well as by Vandy earlier this season).<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Todd Golden and Co. sit at 24-6 on the season and 15-2 in conference play. The Gators have won 10 straight and outright dominated the SEC.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">However, they aren\u2019t unbeatable, especially away from home. This team is uber aggressive and physical \u2014 a style of play that doesn\u2019t always make it far in March (or with the wrong officiating crew).<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">While Florida has the 1 seed in the SEC locked up, they\u2019re still vying for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, so every game counts the same. There will be no lying down by the Gators. Pope has not been great against ranked teams in his tenure, but we\u2019ve also been riding this roller coaster for two seasons now, and nothing would surprise me.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">___________________________________________________________<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kentucky Wildcats will take on the Florida Gators on Saturday afternoon in Lexington. Game time is set&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,73532,74881],"class_list":["post-182558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-kentucky-wildcats-basketball","tag-kentucky-wildcats-discussion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182558","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=182558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}