Florida Gators vs. Kentucky Wildcats Betting Preview, Game Stats

The top-ranked Kentucky Wildcats will try to finish up a perfect regular-season campaign at 31-0 and go 18-0 in conference play when they host the Florida Gators in an SEC matchup on Saturday afternoon.

However, the Wildcats have been anything but perfect against the Gators recently, outside of a 68-61 road win earlier this year that snapped a three-game skid in the series, with all three losses taking place last season.

Kentucky fell just short of covering the spread in that last meeting as an eight-point favorite and has gone 2-5 versus the number in the past seven games between the teams, according to the OddsShark College Basketball Database.

The Wildcats are coming off a 72-64 road victory against the Georgia Bulldogs on Tuesday in which they trailed by nine points with less than 10 minutes left. But Kentucky went on a late 14-0 run to pull off the win behind 19 points and seven rebounds from freshman forward Karl-Anthony Towns.

In fact, the team went 9-of-13 from the field and 6-of-9 from the free-throw line in the final nine minutes to earn the victory. The Wildcats had covered their five previous games, winning by an average of 24 points. The OVER has cashed in Kentucky's last four games along with nine of the past 11.

Meanwhile, Florida (15-15, 8-9 SEC) is really struggling right now and looks like it will miss the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2009. While the Gators have won their last two games against the Tennessee Volunteers and Texas A&M Aggies, they had lost nine of 12 prior to that with a 2-9-1 mark against the spread during that stretch.

The Gators edged Texas A&M 66-62 Tuesday but failed to cover as five-point home favorites on the college basketball betting lines after routing Tennessee 66-49 three days earlier as 6.5-point chalk. The OVER is 3-1 in the team's last four games and 14-5 in its past 19, including the last meeting with the Wildcats.

When Kentucky and Florida last met in Gainesville back on February 7, the home team was up 30-28 at halftime after leading by as many as nine points early on. But like they did against the Bulldogs earlier this week, the Wildcats turned it on after the intermission against the Gators, outscoring them 11-2 in points off turnovers in the second half.

You could also argue that Kentucky won the game at the charity stripe, making 21-of-22 shots for the school's second-best free-throw percentage performance under head coach John Calipari compared to only 7-of-14 for Florida. The lone missed free throw for the Wildcats enabled the Gators to cover the spread.