Wildcats look to avenge home loss to Gators from earlier this season
LEXINGTON, Ky. – The No. 15/13 Kentucky women’s basketball team travels to Gainesville, Fla., on Sunday, Feb. 9, looking to avenge an 83-73 home loss to the Florida Gators from its conference home opener earlier this season in Memorial Coliseum. The Southeastern Conference rematch will tip off at Noon ET in the Stephen C. O’Connell Center on Comcast Sports Southeast (CSS) with Larry Vettel and former Auburn head coach Joe Ciampi calling the action. The game also will be broadcast live on ESPN3, the UK IMG Sports Radio Network with Neil Price and SiriusXM Radio Channel 92 (Sirius) and 190 (XM). Fans can follow Twitter updates on @UKHoopCats.
UK (17-5, 5-4 SEC) currently ranks seventh in the league standings, while Florida (16-7, 6-4 SEC) is sixth. The Wildcats are coming off an impressive, 63-56, victory over No. 14 LSU last week at home and are hoping to ride that momentum into Sunday’s road matchup vs. the Gators.
“Well, it’s a tough game ahead (of us) down in Gainesville against the Gators,” UK Hoops head coach Matthew Mitchell said. “They really took it to us here in Lexington and beat us pretty badly on our home court, so we definitely have to focus in on a very good opponent and try to get prepared this afternoon and tomorrow for what we know will be a tough game. It’s always a tough game with Florida.”
In the previous meeting, Kentucky shot just 35.2 percent from the field, while Florida hit 49.1 percent. Junior point guard Jennifer O’Neill (Bronx, N.Y.) led with 15 points and senior forward Samarie Walker (West Carrollton, Ohio) added 10 points and 12 rebounds. It marked the first game back for senior forward DeNesha Stallworth (Richmond, Calif.) after missing five games due to surgery on her right knee. She scored just four points in seven minutes in her return. The loss snapped UK’s nine-game home winning streak and a six-game winning streak over the Gators.
“We just looked like a team that I thought was entitled to win, felt like they were entitled to win the game,” Mitchell said. “We have tried to talk about it at times. Playing at Memorial Coliseum gives you a great advantage but the building doesn’t win games for you and we just looked like a team that didn’t think there was much chance of us losing. It was a very poor attitude to have. Florida, for a large majority of the first half just had more energy and we just looked like a team that thought eventually something would happen that we would win. We were able to get it flipped and go up and I thought that hurt us probably even more. They were like, ‘well this is what we thought. We’re going to win the game.’ We lost a lot of composure when it got close down at the end, so that would be the best way to describe it. I just thought we sort of felt like we were going to win the game no matter what.”
Three Wildcats are averaging in double digits this season, led O’Neill with 12.0 points per game. Stallworth and Walker follow with 10.8 and 10.4 ppg, respectively. Senior guard Kastine Evans (Salem, Conn.) and junior guard Bria Goss (Indianapolis) narrowly miss the double-digit mark with 9.9 points per game apiece. UK has had nine different leading scorers this season and only twice has a player led the team in scoring in consecutive games: Goss vs. Lipscomb and Middle Tennessee and O’Neill vs. Alabama and Florida.
Walker ranks second overall in SEC rebounding with 9.0 rebounds per game, and is tied for fourth in SEC games only with 8.6 boards per game.
Goss ranks sixth nationally and leads the SEC in free-throw shooting percentage, hitting an impressive 92.8 percent clip (64-of-69). She has now made 23 consecutive free throws which ties for fourth all-time on UK’s all-time list for consecutive free-throws made.
Along with Kentucky, Florida has recorded SEC wins over Mississippi State (82-72), Arkansas (59-52), Auburn (87-69), Alabama (75-67) and Ole Miss (81-60).
Senior guard Jaterra Bonds leads three Gators in double figures this season with 15.6 points to go with a team-high 4.3 assists per game. Redshirt junior Kayla Lewis and sophomore January Miller average 10.9 and 10.3 points per game, respectively. Lewis leads the team in rebounding with 8.7 per game, while ranking second in the SEC in rebounding during SEC games with 8.8 per game. All eight active players on the roster average at least 6.1 points per game.
UK holds a slight 25-23 lead in the overall series, but trails 10-9 when the game is played in Gainesville. The Cats have had success as of late on the road against the Gators after winning the last two meetings in Gainesville. The last loss came on Jan. 29, 2009, 74-59. The last six matchups vs. UF have been decided by 10 points or less. UK went 5-1 in those close games.
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