#1 Kentucky takes down #19 Florida for the third time this season to move onto the SEC championship game. In a game that as far as NCAA seeding go, didn’t amount to anything as UK was setup for the overall #1 seed no matter what. This in thanks to Syracuse 2nd loss last night to unranked Cincinnati and unranked Notre Dame earlier this year. This compared to UK’s 1 loss to top 20 ranked Indiana and if they had lost today their 2nd loss would be to another top 20 team. Our two losses to two top 20 teams vs. Syracuse two losses to unranked teams would have made an easy decision for the committee to decide the overall.
All of this is now mute as Kentucky beat #19 Florida putting them in a situation where they went further in the tournament than Syracuse. Even with a loss to Vanderbilt or Ole Miss tomorrow, it would be a major robbing of Kentucky to not receive the overall number one. Not to mention the fact that the committee claims they have to make a guess on the SEC championship game because of it being so late, only willing to modify if a team steals a bid to the dance and in this case this would apply to Ole Miss if they beat Vandy today and then beat UK tomorrow.
The debate is where UK should go, St. Louis or Atlanta? Atlanta is in the South, UK is in the Southeastern Conference and they don’t call it Catlanta because of a infestation feline problem. St. Louis on the other hand is a tad bit closer. I don’t think it matters either way, I will be looking at who those 2-4 seeds are in our region, this matters to me a whole lot more. Of the two seeds I personally would prefer to see Missouri who is the best of the 2 seeds as far as ranking goes…so I doubt I will be happy with seeing Duke, Michigan St or Ohio St.
As for the game, Kentucky took down a Florida team who came in and accomplished their two goals: 1) Hit lots of threes (11-22) 2) Don’t allow Kentucky to score a ton of threes (5-17) 2) play fast and they still lost.
It was great to see UK take on Florida’s blow in the 1st half; hitting everything they threw up and still found themselves down one at the half thanks to a Davis three with little time left on the clock.
Kentucky took care of business with as balance scoring as you can get amongst your starters. Lamb-16, Jones/Davis/Teague all with 15, and Kidd-Gilchrist with 10. Miller continues to be a no show for his final SEC tournament as he only saw 13 minutes of action and scored a whopping zero points for the second game in a row. We need Miller to play like the senior that he is. The fact that he was the player of the year of last year’s tournament shows that Miller clearly can play well in the SEC tournament, so the question is what is going on with him?
Wiltjer was the only scorer with 3 points. Great to see him hit the first one, said to see he shot only two more and missed both.
For the Gators Murphy played the game of his life scoring 24 points, and Beal played the best he has against Kentucky scoring 20. Young did well early against Davis but then disappeared, ended with 10 points. If I’m Florida, I’m giving the ball more to him. If Davis can’t block his shot in the post, then who can?
Florida shot better from the field (29-60)/UK (27-60), from three as mentioned above, so how did UK win? Numbers wise in free throw shooting. Florida only went to the line twice the whole game, without looking I know that has to be the lowest all season. Not sure if these type of history stats are kept but what was the last time a player only shot 2 free throw shots in a whole game? My guess is 1934 or something like that. Kentucky shot 15-20 (75%) many of those late to stop the clock.
What did you think about UK not intentionally fouling at the end? Kentucky had 3 fouls to give. Yes it was a four point game and not three, but Florida was looking to score quickly knowing the clock wasn’t on their side. From just a fans perspective, it seemed like a good idea to use at least a few of those just to knock off a little bit more time. What say you?
Loving the crowd today. If I’m a Florida player I’m ticked that Florida fans live so much closer and yet cannot draw anywhere near the support. It is pure magic that UK fans snatch up all the tickets like that each year when they are equally given out to all teams. I get that UK fans buy up the tickets to those teams who lose but Florida didn’t even have their 1/12 share in the building…of course I’m sure many UK fans in the Florida area invade their ticket office.
Cats of course now take on the winner of Ole Miss/Vandy same time tomorrow-1 eastern.
Go Cats! Beat Vandy or Ole Miss!
No comments:
Post a Comment