Turnovers Doom No. 12 Kentucky In Road Loss to Florida

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The Kentucky women’s basketball team suffered its second straight loss in Southeastern Conference play on Sunday afternoon, dropping an 85-79 decision to the (RV) Florida Gators at the O’Connell Center. 

Kentucky had the ball down three with 6.3 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter after being down as many as 12 points, but UK would turn it over off the inbounds play, and the Gators went the other way for an and-one that put UK down two scores with under five seconds to go. 

Turnovers was the story of the game for the Wildcats, who turned it over a season-high 30 times on Sunday afternoon, topping its previous season high of 26 set at Auburn to start conference play on Jan. 2. 

With the result, Kentucky drops to 4-5 in SEC play on the season, and moves to 15-4 overall on the year. The Gators move into third place in the SEC with their sixth conference win to move to 6-3 in league action. 

Junior Makayla Epps led all scorers in the game with 27 points, one of four Kentucky players in double figures. Janee Thompson had 16 points on 6-of-11 shooting from the floor and two made 3’s in the game. Freshman Maci Morris scored 10 points and junior Evelyn Akhator collected another double-double with 14 points and 10 rebounds.

Florida had the lead for over 35 minutes in the game, and never relinquished the lead in the second half, while shooting 52 percent from the floor as a team. The Gators made six 3’s in the game, with 22 of 35 made FG’s coming as assisted buckets. Florida had 50 points in the paint as opposed to just 28 for the Wildcats. 

Kentucky continues its road stand on Thursday night at 7 p.m. ET as it travels to No. 2/2 South Carolina. The game will be shown live on the SEC Network and the WatchESPN app. 

For the latest on the Kentucky women’s basketball team, follow @UKHoopCats on Twitter and Facebook, as well as on the web at UKathletics.com.