More than enough

Kentucky passes toughest test with strong offensive showing

GAINESVILE, Fla. -- In the end, the Kentucky Wildcats proved human in the SEC after all.

But only for about seven minutes.

On a day when third-ranked, unbeaten-at-home, Senior Day-injected Florida hoped to erase the ugly memory of its first Kentucky game, an embarrassing 70-55 loss at Rupp Arena, the Wildcats were the ones who ended up making another statement.

The last piece of their 16-0 puzzle would prove the most difficult of all, and in fact perfection was almost snatched from their hands at the very last second.

But when Anthony Roberson’s final 3-point attempt went off course, the Wildcats had held on for a 69-67 victory and the closing argument in their case for national title co-favorite -- alongside Arizona -- heading into the postseason.

“I probably won’t appreciate it until much later on,” Kentucky coach Tubby Smith said. “It helps that we got it in a game of this magnitude, because I think that’s going to help us as we go into postseason play.”

From early on during the streak, observers have latched on to the Wildcats’ often suffocating defense and painted the picture of an old-school, overachieving team that overcomes their own offensive deficiencies.

That picture is somewhat inaccurate.

Florida shot 52.8 percent Saturday, outrebounded the Wildcats 32-21, accounted for only one more turnover, and yet the Wildcats controlled the game for 33 minutes, going up by as much as 14 on several occasions before a remarkable late-game run by the Gators.

The reason? Like any championship team, they made big shots. Lots of them.

Led by 18 points from Gerald Fitch and 15 from Keith Bogans, Kentucky made 9-of-17 3-pointers, many of them just when Florida was starting to get back into the game. On four different occasions in the second half, the Gators whittled the lead to six or seven only to see Fitch or Bogans or the more unlikely Chuck Hayes and Antwain Barbour nail a couple open shots and get it back up to 12 or 14.

And most of those were set up by defensive plays on the other end, with Kentucky making a steal or crashing the boards and starting the fast break.

“There were a couple times in the game I wanted to scream I was so frustrated,” said Florida’s David Lee. “If you blink for one second, they’re the best team in the country at making one of those runs.”

With the crowd and momentum in their favor, Florida did finally make a run the inevitable run that stuck. Down 66-54 with 6:50 left, the Gators didn’t allow a field goal the rest of the way, and Kentucky got uncharacteristically sloppy.

But the Wildcats never actually fell behind.

The closest it came to happening was with 58 seconds remaining and Kentucky up one. The Gators’ Christian Drejer slipped past Bogans into the paint and had a two-on-one with Lee waiting to pounce under the basket.

But in a play that typified Kentucky’s season, Marquis Estill set himself in front of Drejer and took the charge, just as he was dumping the ball to the wide-open Lee. As the Gators turned back down the court, Matt Bonner wore an expression on his face that said, “What else can we do?”

“That’s what made our defense so effective all year long is the willingness of a guy like Marquis to put his body on the line,” said Smith. “Any time you go on the road, if you can keep people at bay, it doesn’t allow the crowd to erupt. If they had taken the lead, that would have put a lot more pressure on us.”

There are any number of ways to quantify the magnitude of the Wildcats’ feat.

In what some say is the nation’s toughest conference, Kentucky went unbeaten and only had two games -- the first and the last -- decided by less than seven points. They held their 16 opponents to 41-percent shooting, outrebounding them by more than 100 and allowed less than 59 points per game.

But the most impressive thing of all is what they did to otherwise formidable Florida, a team that went 24-4 in its other games.

What they did at Rupp -- allowing only six first-half field goals, holding a team that averages 77 points per game to 55, forcing them to shoot 34 percent and going up by as much as 60-31 -- was one thing. It’s another to walk into an emotional O’Connell Center where Florida hadn’t lost in 14 months, on a day that honored the school’s most accomplished senior class in history, and jump to a double-digit lead in the first 11 minutes. While their near-collapse was troubling, it wasn’t exactly astonishing considering the circumstances.

“If everyone says Kentucky is the best team in America,” said the Gators’ Billy Donovan, “we’re not too far behind.”

Maybe so, Billy, but there must also be a reason the Wildcats are sitting in a class all their own.

Are they vulnerable? Sure. If their shots aren’t falling, a good opponent could capitalize. If they ever run into a team with true post players, maybe Estill and Jules Camara wouldn’t be able to get mismatches inside. And if ever they ran into a similarly defensive-minded foe, maybe it would cut down on some of their patented runs.

But there’s one distinctive flaw with all those theories.

In 16 SEC games, none of them ever happened.

Stewart Mandel covers college sports for SI.com.

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