Recap: Florida Women’s Basketball Blown Out at Kentucky

A strong performance from forward Eveylyn Akhator and a 26-13 run spanning most of the third quarter and half of the fourth propelled Kentucky to a 67-48 blow-out win over the Florida women’s basketball team on Sunday in Lexington. The loss drops the Gators to 13-14 overall and 4-10 in conference play, while Kentucky improves to 19-8 and 10-4 in SEC action.

Recap

Akhator led the way for the Wildcats, putting up 19 points and nine rebounds, including going 8-for-10 from the field. The senior forward ranks in the top five in the SEC in both rebounding and field goal percentage, and the Gators had no answer for her defense.

Two others scored double digits for Kentucky, with Maci Morris getting 15 points and three rebounds and Makayla Epps dropping 14 points. Taylor Murray only scored four points for the Wildcats, but came up big as a facilitator, dishing out 11 assists on the day.

For the Gators, they had only five players score in the game, with them all being the starters. Four of them reached double-figures, led by guard Delicia Washington who had 14 points and three rebounds. Tyshara Fleming nearly had a double-double before fouling out, putting up 10 points and eight rebounds.

First Half

Florida managed to hang around in the opening 20 minutes. Kentucky jumped out to a 22-12 lead early in the second quarter, but Florida ended the half on a 15-9 run to enter halftime down only 31-27. Ronni Williams scored eight of her 12 points in the first half, while Tyshara Fleming grabbed six boards to go along with six points in the first half.

halftime stats

Let's #GoGators pic.twitter.com/1QNQyGuiHN

— Gators Women’s Basketball (@GatorsWBK) February 19, 2017

Second Half

Kentucky used a big run and stingy defense to pull away from the Gators in the second half.

A jumper from Washington made it a 31-29 game with 9:03 left in the third quarter. From that moment on, Kentucky launched a 19-6 run over the next six minutes to give themselves a double-digit lead that would never go below 12 points the rest of the way. Six points each from Epps and Akhator sparked the run for the Wildcats.

Kentucky took advantage of many Florida mistakes throughout the half and the game. They outscored the Gators 25-5 in second chance points, and scored 24 points off of 23 Florida turnovers.

In addition, they held Florida to just 21 points in the second half. They scored 11 points in the fourth quarter, ending up with 48 points for the game, a season low for the Gators, and their first time scoring less than 50 since an 82-49 loss at Mississippi State.

Final from Lexington pic.twitter.com/evVMxTPvnh

— Gators Women’s Basketball (@GatorsWBK) February 19, 2017

Up Next

Two games remain for Florida before the SEC Tournament. The first of those is Thursday night at Tennessee before they return home on Sunday to face Georgia.