{"id":182664,"date":"2026-03-08T00:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T00:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/182664\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T00:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T00:46:09","slug":"no-5-florida-beats-kentucky-84-77-to-finish-regular-season-with-11-game-win-streak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/182664\/","title":{"rendered":"No. 5 Florida beats Kentucky 84-77 to finish regular season with 11-game win streak"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"VideoPlayer-backgroundImage\" alt=\"default-cbs-image\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1772820490_488_video-slate.png\"\/><\/p>\n<p>LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP)  Thomas Haugh had 20 points and nine rebounds as No. 5 <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/college-basketball\/teams\/FLA\/florida-gators\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Florida<\/a> beat <a class=\"Annotation-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbssports.com\/college-basketball\/teams\/UK\/kentucky-wildcats\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kentucky<\/a> 84-77 on Saturday to end the regular season with an 11-game winning streak.<\/p>\n<p>Boogie Fland added 16 points and six assists for the Gators (25-6, 16-2 Southeastern Conference), the No. 1 seed in next week\u2019s SEC Tournament at Nashville, Tennessee. The defending national champions completed a regular-season sweep of the Wildcats (19-12, 10-8).<\/p>\n<p>Alex Condon scored 14 points for Florida. Rueben Chinyelu had 13 points and eight rebounds, and Xaivian Lee finished with 11 points, seven rebounds and five assists.<\/p>\n<p>Otega Oweh led Kentucky with 28 points, 17 in the first half. Oweh was honored before the game along with follow senior Denzel Aberdeen and walk-ons Zack Tow and Walker Horn.<\/p>\n<p>Aberdeen scored 15 points, and Mouhamed Dioubate added 10 off the bench for Kentucky.<\/p>\n<p>Florida scored the first 11 points and never trailed. Meanwhile, the Wildcats missed their first seven shots, including three from 3-point range.<\/p>\n<p>Haugh scored 17 points and connected on three of the Gators\u2019 six 3s in the first half.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the sluggish start, Kentucky regrouped and pulled within one twice before Florida responded with 13 straight points. A 25-8 run gave the Gators a 45-27 advantage with 2:19 remaining in the first half, and Florida led 49-32 at the break.<\/p>\n<p>Florida won the SEC regular-season title by three games over Arkansas and gets a double bye into the quarterfinals of the conference tournament Friday.<\/p>\n<p>Kentucky was awaiting its first SEC Tournament opponent.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here and here (AP News mobile app). AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/p>\n<p class=\"StatsincCopyright\">\n    Copyright 2026 STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP) Thomas Haugh had 20 points and nine rebounds as No. 5 Florida beat Kentucky 84-77&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":178783,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8294,28,2530,30,29,2529],"class_list":["post-182664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-college-basketball","tag-florida","tag-florida-gators","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-kentucky-wildcats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182664","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=182664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}