{"id":182793,"date":"2026-03-08T03:36:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T03:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/182793\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T03:36:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T03:36:12","slug":"florida-84-77-kentucky-mar-7-2026-game-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/182793\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida 84-77 Kentucky (Mar 7, 2026) Game Recap"},"content":{"rendered":"

LEXINGTON, Ky. — \u2014 Thomas Haugh<\/a> had 20 points and nine rebounds as No. 5 Florida beat Kentucky 84-77 on Saturday to end the regular season with an 11-game winning streak.<\/p>\n

Boogie Fland<\/a> 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

Alex Condon<\/a> scored 14 points for Florida. Rueben Chinyelu<\/a> had 13 points and eight rebounds, and Xaivian Lee<\/a> finished with 11 points, seven rebounds and five assists.<\/p>\n

Otega Oweh<\/a> led Kentucky with 28 points, 17 in the first half. Oweh was honored before the game along with follow senior Denzel Aberdeen<\/a> and walk-ons Zack Tow and Walker Horn<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Aberdeen scored 15 points, and Mouhamed Dioubate<\/a> added 10 off the bench for Kentucky.<\/p>\n

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

Haugh scored 17 points and connected on three of the Gators\u2019 six 3s in the first half.<\/p>\n

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

Up next <\/p>\n

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

Kentucky was awaiting its first SEC Tournament opponent.<\/p>\n

——<\/p>\n

Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a> and here<\/a> (AP News mobile app). AP college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/college-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEXINGTON, Ky. — \u2014 Thomas Haugh had 20 points and nine rebounds as No. 5 Florida beat Kentucky…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182794,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-182793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182793","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=182793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}