SPORTS

Florida players say UK will be dangerous

Adam Himmelsbach
ahimmelsbach@courier-journal.com
UK's Aaron Harrison battles Florida's Will Yeguete for a loose ball in the first half of Sunday’s SEC tournament championship game at the Georgia Dome.

ORLANDO—Kentucky enters this week as one of the NCAA tournament's great conundrums. Yes, the Wildcats are impossibly talented, but they're also a No. 8 seed. Yes, they struggled for much of this season, but their SEC tournament run showed they might be rounding into form at just the right time.

UK isn't here in Orlando, but Florida is, so I asked the Gators for an outsider's perspective on the Wildcats' maturation. Florida defeated UK by 10 points in Lexington and by 19 points in Gainesville during the regular season.

But in the SEC tournament title game on Sunday, UK overcame a 15-point deficit in the final 11 minutes before falling, 61-60. Several Florida players told me they came away from that game impressed.

"They're talented and they showed resiliency, too," Gators forward Dorian Finney-Smith said. "They just kept battling. They're getting better as a team. They're playing harder. They're playing more connected, and they're playing for each other a lot more."

"They've grown a lot," guard Michael Frazier added. "Even from the last game of the regular season to the SEC tournament, they'd grown just that one week. It felt like a totally different team when we played them on Sunday."

I asked Frazier to elaborate on how UK has grown, what he specifically noticed in the last 10 minutes of that SEC final.

"Their poise to stay with it, to stay motivated and keep grinding," he said. "They ended up coming back after we gave them a couple of knockout punches. They got up and kept fighting. I think when you're a young team that's hard to do, because you haven't been through it before."

Several Florida players believe the SEC could be dangerous during this tournament, particularly with Tennessee and Kentucky seeming to find their strides.

Florida, of course, has been on a roll for months. UK, meanwhile, is looking more like the team many expected to see.

"They're just playing together now," Florida forward Will Yeguette said. "Just knowing what the other guy wants defensively, where he needs to be. They're coming together as a team and we wish them the best."

Adam Himmelsbach can be reached at 502-582-4372 by email ahimmelsbach@courier-journal.com and on Twitter @adamhimmelsbach