Kentucky faces Florida in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals, aiming to overcome two regular-season losses with a physical, fast-paced game.<\/p>\n
NASHVILLE, Tenn. \u2014 The Kentucky Wildcats are on to the SEC Tournament Quarterfinals. But their biggest game of the tournament is the one ahead of them. They have the Florida Gators for their third game of the tournament. A team that has already beaten them twice this season.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know Florida well. We haven’t had the success we wanted to so far,\u201d said Kentucky Head Coach Mark Pope.<\/p>\n
The Gators beat the Cats as recently as March 7th in Rupp Arena, with the final score being 84-77.<\/p>\n
But the Wildcats have set the tone of the SEC tournament with their physicality. In the first half against Missouri, they caused 7 turnovers. They beat the Tigers 78-72. They also battled in the post against LSU. Center Malachi Moreno came out of that game with a black eye.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe seen a glimpse of how physical we can play yesterday, so we have to carry that to tomorrow,\u201d said guard Kam Williams. \u201cBecause it’s probably the most physical team in our conference, we play tomorrow. So we will do everything we need to do first and win. \u201c<\/p>\n
In their 2nd round win against Missouri, the Cats also got off to a fast start. That aggressive offense and battling in transition is going to be key to beating the Gators, according to senior guard Otega Oweh.<\/p>\n
\u201cTransition defense got to be really good, and then we got to win the rebounding battle.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe know that they that they’re big on rebounding. Last time we played, we lost the rebound the battle by one. So now this game tomorrow, we’re going to try to win it by more than one,\u201d echoed forward Mouhamed Dioubate.<\/p>\n
Head Coach Mark Pope thinks the SEC Tournament has been a good warmup for what they\u2019ll face against Florida.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s a pretty good prep for Florida’s rim protection. Their rim protection is the top in the league, and they trick you into going there and using possessions that would be best shared with a teammate, and they’re really good at it. Their size is elite, their physicality is elite, and our guys responded pretty well,\u201d said Pope. \u201cThere’s no secret about how the way they play. They’re just really good at it, and really in our league, nobody’s really found an answer to that, yet, we’re hoping that we’ll have some success tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
The SEC Quarterfinals tip off at 1 p.m. EST.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kentucky faces Florida in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals, aiming to overcome two regular-season losses with a physical, fast-paced…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-189657","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\/189657","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=189657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}