Koby Brea gets hot, and Kentucky wins a big one. Cats beat No. 6 Florida in SEC opener.

Ben Roberts, Lexington Herald-Leader on Jan 4, 2025

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LEXINGTON, Ky. — It was a less than encouraging first few minutes of the SEC basketball season for the Kentucky Wildcats. The cause for concern lifted soon enough.

The No. 10-ranked Cats righted the ship with an epic run midway through the first half and held off No. 6 Florida at the end, scoring a 106-100 victory and handing the Florida Gators their first loss of the season in Saturday’s league opener in Rupp Arena.

Koby Brea scored a career-high 23 points and made a career-high seven 3-pointers to lead the Cats in scoring. Brea was 7 for 9 on long-range shots and UK went 14 for 29 (48.3%) from deep against the Gators, who came into the day allowing their opponents to shoot just 26.6% from 3-point range — the second-lowest number in the country.

Five other Wildcats scored in double figures: Lamont Butler (19 points, a career-high eight assists, plus three steals), Otega Oweh (16 points and two steals), Amari Williams (15 points, eight rebounds and five assists), Jaxson Robinson (14 points) and Andrew Carr (14 points, four rebounds and five assists).

Robinson also eclipsed the 1,000-point mark for his college career during Saturday’s game. He previously played at Texas A&M, Arkansas and BYU before transferring to Kentucky for his fifth and final season.

Walter Clayton Jr., who helped lead Florida past Kentucky in Rupp last season, led the Gators with 33 points in Saturday’s loss, tying his career high.

Kentucky was down 26-15 — the Cats’ biggest deficit of the game — nearly midway through the first half before unleashing a 16-0 run over a span of less than four minutes. It started with a 3-pointer from Brea — the Cats had missed four of their first five long-range attempts — and ended with a 3-pointer from Oweh, who scored a total of 10 points during the run (with Brea scoring the other six).

Florida missed seven consecutive shots amid that UK run, and all of them were 3-pointers.

The game stayed relatively close for the next few minutes, and the score was tied at 40 before Kentucky pulled out another big run. This one featured five points from Robinson and five points for Butler, whose stepback jumper with about a minute left in the half gave UK a 50-40 lead. Butler also came up with a steal and layup in the final seconds before halftime to send the Cats to the locker room with a 52-42 advantage at the break.

The Gators got back within one point twice in the second half, and they had narrowed UK’s lead to 70-69 before yet another 10-0 run from the Wildcats put Kentucky up by double digits with a little more than nine minutes remaining. Florida got back within two points later in the half, but the Gators couldn’t tie it up after halftime, and it was never a one-possession game inside the final 3:50.

The Cats pulled off the victory despite losing the rebounding battle (38-30) and getting outscored in second-chance points (31-12) against a Florida team that came into the game ranked No. 2 nationally in offensive rebounding. The Wildcats didn’t grab their first defensive rebound until nearly eight minutes into the first half.

Kentucky improved to 12-2 on the season and landed another big win for the NCAA Tournament résumé, adding Florida to Duke and Gonzaga in the victory column so far. The Gators (13-1) were trying to win two games in a row in Rupp Arena for the first time since 2006 and 2007, the two years they won back-to-back national titles under head coach Billy Donovan.

Florida came into the game at No. 4 in the NCAA’s NET ratings. The Gators were UK’s first ranked opponent this season in Rupp Arena, where the Cats had mainly feasted on mid-major teams — along with a 93-85 victory over Louisville last month — before Saturday’s SEC opener.

Game projections from the KenPom, Torvik and EvanMiya analytics websites all predicted just a one-point margin of victory — with KenPom having the Gators on top and the other two sites picking UK to win — a demonstration of how close this one was expected to be.

Those projections accounted for the Cats’ home-court advantage in Rupp Arena, which was at capacity and filled in well before tipoff despite the 11 a.m. ET start time, a hot crowd coming to life with that first 16-0 run and helping UK keep the momentum for much of the day.

Next up for Kentucky will be a trip to Georgia, which entered the day at No. 47 in the KenPom ratings and defeated St. John’s earlier in the season. The Bulldogs were 32nd in voting in this week’s AP Top 25 poll, and the Wildcats are scheduled to face three nationally ranked teams in a row following their game in Athens, Ga., on Tuesday (7 p.m. on SEC Network).

The next three for UK after that one: at No. 17 Mississippi State next Saturday, then home games against No. 13 Texas A&M (Jan. 14) and No. 5 Auburn (Jan. 18), a daunting start to what will be a season-long challenge in the stacked SEC.

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