Kentucky Looks to Stay Hot at Home as Georgia Comes to Town
Tuesday night in Lexington brings another chapter in the long-running SEC rivalry between Kentucky and Georgia, and the stakes are rising. Kentucky, sitting at 17-8 overall and 8-4 in conference play, has been building momentum despite a recent stumble. The Wildcats haven’t lost to Georgia at Rupp Arena since 2009-a streak they’ll be looking to extend as they try to stay in the thick of the SEC race.
They’re coming off a 92-83 loss at Florida, a game that saw Kentucky fall behind early and never quite recover. The Gators jumped out to a 15-point lead, and while the Wildcats fought back with a 49-point second half, the deficit proved too much to overcome. Still, there was a silver lining: the fight was there.
“Our guys are always resilient,” said head coach Mark Pope. “That’s who we are.
I’m not surprised about the rally. That’s our expectation.
Our guys are fighters and they’re not going to stop. We just weren’t quite good enough.”
That resilience has been the story of Kentucky’s season. After a shaky 5-4 start, the Wildcats have won eight of their last ten and are now part of a four-way tie for third in the SEC. They’re starting to look like a team that’s figuring itself out at just the right time.
A big part of that surge? Sophomore guard Collin Chandler.
He’s become Kentucky’s go-to shooter from deep, leading the team with 50 made threes and a 42.7% clip from beyond the arc. In SEC play, he’s been even better-averaging 10.3 points and hitting nearly 46.5% of his threes.
“I just think I’ve been put in positions that I can be successful in,” Chandler said. “Positions I’m comfortable in. I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary that we don’t do in practice every day.”
While Chandler is stretching defenses, Otega Oweh is doing the heavy lifting on the scoreboard. The junior leads the team with 17.0 points per game, while Denzel Aberdeen adds 12.5 a night, giving Kentucky a balanced attack that can beat you in a variety of ways.
Georgia, on the other hand, comes into this one reeling. The Bulldogs started the season strong-16-3 overall and 4-2 in the SEC-but they’ve dropped five of their last six and are now 17-8 and 5-7 in conference play.
Saturday’s 16-point loss at Oklahoma was especially tough. Georgia led by seven early in the second half, but the Sooners exploded for 53 points after the break, hitting 14 threes and running away with it.
“We had a couple of really poor offensive possessions that led to some open threes for them in transition, and that was it,” said Georgia head coach Mike White. “Never got into a rhythm defensively the entire game. We did a very poor job defending the three.”
That’s been a troubling trend for Georgia during this skid. Even though they rank seventh nationally in scoring at 90.3 points per game, they’ve struggled to get stops-and they’ve been without their top scorer, Jeremiah Wilkinson (17.1 ppg), for the past two games due to a shoulder injury. His status remains up in the air heading into Tuesday.
Without Wilkinson, the Bulldogs have leaned more on Blue Cain (13.6 ppg) and Marcus Millender (12.0 ppg), but the offense hasn’t clicked the same way. White knows the fixes need to come fast if Georgia wants to salvage its NCAA Tournament hopes.
“We need to challenge these guys, encourage these guys, educate these guys,” White said. “We’ve just got to make more winning plays.
It starts with me and our staff helping these guys understand how that looks. ... We made some plays (on Saturday) that represent not understanding how to win on the road in the SEC.”
Tuesday’s game is shaping up to be a crossroads for both programs. Kentucky is trying to solidify its spot near the top of the SEC and protect a home court that’s been a nightmare for Georgia for over a decade. The Bulldogs, meanwhile, are looking to stop the bleeding and reignite a season that once looked so promising.
Two teams. Two very different trajectories. One game that could shape the rest of their seasons.