Another slow start by Kentucky created an 18-point first-half hole

Slow starts have been an unfortunate theme for this season’s Kentucky team. Those resurfaced with the fifth-ranked team in the country in town.

Florida jumped out to a quick 11-0 lead against the Wildcats less than three minutes into Saturday’s regular-season finale. For many within the Big Blue Nation, it felt like the game was already over with. We’ve seen this Kentucky crew march back from huge deficits several times throughout the season, but not when facing a team like Florida, a group playing like a national title contender.

Double-digit comebacks are possible against teams in the middle of the pack, but not as easily against ones riding a 10-game winning streak. To rub salt in the wound, Kentucky technically outscored Florida the rest of the way after the 11-0 start, ultimately losing by seven, 84-77, on Senior Day.

“We have done that sometimes to start games where we’ve been a little bit sticky and a little paralyzed,” Head coach Mark Pope said postgame.

The Wildcats did storm back in this one, though, trimming the Gators’ lead down to a single point multiple times midway through the first half. Then Florida rattled off a 13-0 run. The game truly was over at that point, even with UK’s last-ditch comeback effort in the closing minutes of the second half. Pope blamed player fatigue (which one of his own players later refuted) for that 13-0 run, even though none of his guys had even played 20 minutes of basketball to that point.

“The run later in the (first) half was really tough for us,” Pope said. “We are just trying to figure out how to manage this, you know, we make poor decisions when we are tired on the floor. We just do, we make poor decisions when we are tired on the floor.”

Turnovers were an early issue for the ‘Cats. Those miscues led to easy buckets for Florida the other way. Pope added that the Gators won the fastbreak battle 19-0 in the first half, most of those points coming after Kentucky cut the Florida lead down to a one-possession ball game with 10 minutes still left in the first half. Five of Todd Golden‘s players saw more than 25 minutes across the game, compared to just four for Kentucky.

“We can’t afford to start a game down 11-0. That just put us behind for the whole game,” Mo Dioubate said. “There’s no time to play catch-up anymore, we gotta just be in the game, keep it a close game throughout the whole game. Can’t have any slow starts. Can’t afford that right now.”

All that being said, we’re now 31 games into the season. Kentucky’s slow starts were a talking point all the way back in November. Dioubate said that some changes to the pregame routine worked for a few games earlier in the season, but old habits (or new ones with the same end result) eventually reared their ugly head.

If the issues with starting games haven’t been fixed by now, when will they be?

“I wish I had the answer for that, for real,” Dioubate said. “I wish I had an answer for that.”

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