Kentucky falls to Florida on Senior Day, a costly loss for SEC tournament seeding

Ben Roberts, Lexington Herald-Leader on Mar 7, 2026

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LEXINGTON, Ky. — Kentucky lost its final game of a roller-coaster regular season Saturday evening.

The Cats also squandered a golden opportunity for the upcoming postseason.

Mark Pope’s team fell behind No. 5 Florida in the early going and never fully recovered, ultimately falling 84-77 in the final basketball game at Rupp Arena for the 2025-26 campaign.

Kentucky was down 17 points at halftime and fell behind by as many as 20 midway through the second half before one more attempt at a rally down the stretch.

Down 71-53 with fewer than eight minutes remaining, the Cats went on a 13-3 run, narrowing the deficit to single digits on a basket from Mouhamed Dioubate that made it 74-66 with 2:31 still to play.

Kentucky got even closer after that, cutting Florida’s lead to 77-70 on a drive by Otega Oweh with about a minute left. A bucket by Malachi Moreno cut the Gators’ advantage to 78-72 with 47 seconds left. After a couple of Florida free throws, Oweh was fouled while shooting a 3-pointer with 29.9 seconds remaining.

Oweh made all three free throws, and the Gators’ lead was down to 80-75. There was a missed out-of-bounds call on the inbounds play that could have given the ball back to the Cats, but there was no whistle, and Florida made two more free throws at the other end.

On UK’s next possession, Denzel Aberdeen was fouled while shooting a 3-pointer. He made two of those free throws, and Florida’s lead was 82-77. After a free throw by Gators guard Xaivian Lee made it 83-77, Oweh missed a 3-pointer with 12 seconds left, and the Kentucky fans started heading for the Rupp Arena exits.

It was a costly loss from an NCAA tournament perspective — the Cats could have moved up as much as a seed line with a victory — but it also made their work next week a lot more difficult.

Due to results that went in their favor earlier in the day, the Cats would have clinched a 4 seed and the double bye into Friday’s SEC tournament quarterfinals with a win over the Gators.

Instead, the loss dropped them all the way out of the top eight in the conference. As a result, Kentucky (19-12, 10-8 SEC) will have to begin its SEC tournament journey Wednesday in Nashville, Tenn., and the Cats will need to win five games in five days to claim the league championship. The official SEC tournament bracket will be released late Saturday night.

Florida (25-6, 16-2 SEC) had already clinched the 1 seed in the league tournament and is still fighting to claim a 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, with Selection Sunday now eight days away.

Playing in his final home game, Oweh scored 28 points to lead the Cats, tallying 17 of those in the first half, when he went 4 for 6 from 3-point range. Oweh’s previous career high for made 3s in a game was three, and he surpassed that number with 2:09 left in the first half.

Fellow Senior Day honoree Aberdeen, who played his first three seasons at Florida and helped the Gators win a national championship last year, finished with 15 points. Dioubate added 10 points for Kentucky.

Florida’s Thomas Haugh, who missed the team’s 108-74 win over Mississippi State on Tuesday night with an ankle injury, led the Gators with 20 points. He scored 17 in the first half.

The game got away from Kentucky from the opening tip.

Florida’s Rueben Chinyelu hit a layup on the first possession of the game, and that opened a stretch in which the Gators made their first four shots from the field — while the Cats couldn’t make a thing on the other end — and the visitors jumped out to an 11-0 lead before three minutes had ticked off the clock.

That opening flurry featured points from every Florida starter except for Haugh, who would do plenty of damage later in the half. The Cats weren’t buried from the beginning, however.

UK, which missed its first seven shots from the field, responded with nine consecutive points over a span of a little more than two minutes to narrow the Gators’ advantage to 11-9, igniting a Rupp Arena crowd that had been quickly silenced by that initial burst from the SEC champions.

The two sides traded buckets from there — and Kentucky got within one point of Florida on two separate occasions — before the Gators unleashed another run.

This was a 13-0 flurry — with seven points from Haugh — that extended Florida’s lead to 33-19.

Kentucky never got back within single digits in the period and went into halftime on the wrong end of a 49-32 score.

The Gators shot 64.3% from the floor in the first half. UK was 37.9% from the field before halftime. Florida cooled down in the second half — shooting 30.3% from the floor — but the Cats couldn’t capitalize, making just 40.5% of their field goals after halftime.

Kentucky’s next game will come Wednesday at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville. The Cats’ first-round opponent for the SEC tournament will be revealed when the official bracket comes out Saturday night.

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