Despite Todd Golden's smarmy attitude following Saturday's game, there are several key indicators that point to just how incredibly lucky Florida was to escape with a win.
We aren't just talking about the bad calls, of which there were numerous. We aren't just talking about the outright missed calls, of which there were also numerous. We are talking about the actual, cold, hard statistics of the game.
Xaivian Lee's statistical fluke
Let's start with Xaivian Lee's rare shooting display.
Lee hit four massive three-pointers against us on Saturday afternoon. To put into perspective just how out of character that was, Lee had exactly four total threes during a five-game stretch from January 20th to February 7th. That kind of scorching shooting efficiency is simply not going to carry on for Florida.
You live with a team like that making threes, and for long stretches before Malachi Moreno got in foul trouble, Kentucky was successfully forcing Florida to live on the perimeter. That defensive strategy is exactly how we stayed in the game. But it wasn't meant to be once the foul trouble started piling up on our frontcourt.
The officiating blind spots
Speaking of fouls, let's take a look at some of the glaring missed calls from Saturday's whistle-fest.
Two examples, wish I had time to show more. Both called fouls on KY. Idk what was worse. The no calls of Florida when they would hack and grab us, or the lousy “touch” fouls they called on KY all game. Hard to make lay ups when half of them are UF players FOULING. pic.twitter.com/R2H2ek0mcJ
— Gabe Vance (@gabe_vance1903) February 15, 2026
@SECOfficiating @SEC do the rules just not apply to @GatorsMBk?
— Second Take (@SecondTake20) February 14, 2026
1. Shove to create space
2. 6 in the key uncalled. Results in foul on UK
3. Bumps driver off their path while not in legal guarding postion
4. This is what UK is called for. 🙄
BLOW A WHISTLE ON CHINYELU! pic.twitter.com/71CiyZ645h
Rueben Chinyelu may as well transfer up to Tennessee and play for Rick Barnes with all the shoves in the back he gets away with. And that doesn't even touch on him completely camping out in the paint. Forget 3 seconds, you can probably count to 10 on every other possession.
And then there is Alex Condon, who took so many extra steps on Saturday it looked like he was line dancing out there.
The referees also completely botched a play at the end of the first half. Boogie Fland took a jumper, and the ball clearly bounced out of bounds with 1.6 seconds left to go. The refs just let the clock lazily wind down to zero and sent everyone to the locker room.
I won't sit here and pretend the refs caused this loss. They didn't. Kentucky had 9 turnovers in the opening 14 minutes, and it missed 15 layups. It had absolutely terrible shot selection when the game got tight, and they had terrible defensive communication. We bear the responsibility for that.
But there were a lot of incredibly lucky factors that bailed out the Gators in this one, whether Todd Golden wants to admit it or not.