Kentucky keeps suffering injuries, and Mark Pope keeps finding answers. First, it was Jaland Lowe, then Jayden Quaintance, and most recently, it has been Kam Williams who was lost from the Wildcats’ starting lineup. Yet, without him, they have rolled to back-to-back wins, beating Oklahoma 94-78 at Rupp Arena on Wednesday night, and after an embarrassing loss to Vanderbilt, are suddenly just a half-game back of the lead in the SEC at 7-3.
Kentucky’s opportunity to make up ground on the conference-leading and defending national champion Florida Gators is coming up, as the next two Saturdays will determine whether or not the Cats are ready to compete when the calendar flips to March.
After suffering a trap game vs. Oklahoma, Kentucky’s next two games loom large
Collin Chandler told the media this week that last Saturday’s win over Arkansas and John Calipari in Fayetteville proved that they’re capable of competing with the best. Maybe that’s true, but with the stench of last week’s 80-55 beatdown at Vanderbilt still wafting across Big Blue Nation, many fans are going to require a bit more evidence to come to that same verdict.
How would wins over No. 25 Tennessee and at No. 17 Florida do? Well, those two games, the former coming up on Saturday at Rupp and the latter occurring a week from then at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center, will decide whether or not Chandler’s statement was true.
Wednesday night was a frightening trap game against an SEC cellar-dweller. This Saturday is just the opposite. Tennessee, though barely clinging to a spot in the AP Top 25, is 17th in KenPom, the third-highest rated SEC team, and riding a four-game win streak since falling to the Wildcats in Knoxville last month.
Tennessee is playing its best ball amid Nate Ament’s breakout
The Vols are playing their best basketball of the year, and that’s largely due to the long-awaited breakout of five-star freshman Nate Ament. Across the four-game win-streak, the 6-foot-10 forward is averaging 24.5 points a game and on Tuesday night scored 28 on 15 shots in an 84-66 win over Ole Miss.
Each of the past two years, Rich Barnes has dipped into the Transfer Portal to find the primary scoring option to pair with his lockdown defensive structure and carry his team on the offensive end of the floor with Dalton Knecht and then Chaz Lanier. This time around, he foisted that responsibility upon Ament’s shoulders, and understandably, it’s taken time for him to settle in. Now that he has, Tennessee is as scary as any team in the conference.
Florida’s frontcourt will test Kentucky’s big-man depth
The gold standard of the conference, of course, is Todd Golden’s Gators. Not just sitting atop the standings, the Gators are the league’s highest-rated team in KenPom at No. 7. Florida still has questions in the backcourt, but its loaded front court with Thomas Haugh, Alex Condon, and Rueben Chinyelu will test a Kentucky front line that has its share of rebounding issues after sustaining so many issues and leans heavily on freshman Malachi Moreno.
Neither Tennessee nor Florida will be easy to beat, but Kentucky has to prove it can down two of the SEC’s top contenders in a down year for the league to keep dreams of a deep run in the NCAA Tournament alive.