Slowing down Otega Oweh was among Florida's top scouting priorities

It had been a while since we’ve seen Otega Oweh score under 20 points — over three full weeks, to be exact.

Kentucky’s star player came into Saturday’s game against Florida having broken the 20-point mark in five straight games, four of those coming as wins for the Wildcats. That last time he failed to hit that number was when he dropped 18 points in a win over Texas on Jan. 21. Since the start of SEC play, Oweh had scored 20 or more in all but two of his 11 conference games. But none of those teams were as long and as talented on defense as the Gators.

And those factors played out in Florida’s favor during their 92-83 win over Kentucky in Gainesville.

“We did a great job on the scout with Oweh,” Florida forward Alex Condon said postgame. “We knew he wanted to get downhill to his right hand, and we made him try and finish with his left a lot of the night.”

Florida held Oweh to just 13 points on 4-14 shooting, including a 0-3 clip from three-point range, in a team-high 37 minutes. The senior guard missed a handful of shots at the rim and couldn’t generate enough space to consistently create easy looks for himself. Oweh, along with his backcourt teammate Denzel Aberdeen, was near the very top of Florida’s pregame preparation plan.

“A big part of our scout was to make it tough on obviously Otega and Zel, and they went 12-for-35 combined from the field, one for nine from three,” Florida head coach Todd Golden said. “I thought we did a really good job of defending those guys.”

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Despite a subpar showing, Oweh was still able to extend his streak of reaching double-figures in consecutive games. He’s now scored 10 or more points in all 25 games this season. Going back to last season, he’s at 28 games in a row with at least 10 points. He even joined the 1,000-point club as a Wildcat with his game against Florida, currently sitting on 1,009 points during his two-year stretch at UK — only the fifth transfer to hit that mark.

It was a frustrating performance for Oweh, who still managed to tack on five rebounds, two assists, and two steals to his stat line. But he turned the ball over three times and finished the game with four fouls. This was Kentucky’s first game in a week, but it was also the fourth straight game he’s been on the floor for more than 35 minutes as the Wildcats’ rotation slowly continues to shrink.

“He’s logging heavy minutes, but he’s built that way.” Kentucky head coach Mark Pope said. “Otega will compete until he drops dead.”

Kentucky is asking a lot out of Oweh as of late. For the most part, he’s met those expectations. But Florida just happened to have his number on Saturday.