Denzel Aberdeen greeted former teammate Rueben Chinyelu after Saturday's game. (Florida Athletics/Maddie Washburn Photo)
After playing three years for the Gators, including the national championship season, he left for Kentucky and fans turned on him before the game even started.
However, the Kentucky senior guard still managed 19 points even though it took 21 shots. He was just 1-for-6 from 3 and under constant pressure from Florida’s defense. He did add four assists, one rebound and one steal in his 34 minutes and only two turnovers in UK’s 92-83 loss.
“I had no doubt about Denzel,” Kentucky coach Mark Pope said on the UK Radio Network postgame show. “He loves competition. He’s not scared of the lights. He’s not scared of the fans. He loves to compete. He’s just got an inner peace about him that’s actually pretty special. And so I knew he would come and play well.”
Aberdeen embraced Florida coach Todd Golden before the game and hugged teammates after Florida’s win.
“It felt great to be back home, especially with my old teammates,” Aberdeen, a Florida native, said. “It was difficult that we couldn’t get the win but we will see them again (in the regular-season finale on March 7th in Rupp Arena).
“We made a lot of mistakes early in the game. If we just cleaned that up we would have been in the game (instead of behind by 16 points). We just have to clean up those mistakes. We got some good shots in the first half that didn’t go in.”
Kentucky cut the lead to four points early in the second half and twice trimmed the lead to five points later in the half.
“We are never going to quit. We just have to limit our mistakes in the first half,” Aberdeen said. “But we are near going to quit. We just have to find a way to start better.”
Golden thought his team did a “great job” defensively on Aberdeen and made him take “tough shots” during the game.
“The one I was disappointed with was the 3 we gave up in the first half on the ball screen where our help wasn’t high enough. We understand that for this team, (Otega) Oweh and Aberdeen are going to try and make all of the points,” Golden said. “We got to do a good job of running (Matt) Chandler off the line, which we didn’t.
“But if we could cut their waiter off and that we would give ourselves a good chance to win. They’re both really good players (Aberdeen and Oweh) and you’re not going to make them miss every time. But you know to go a combined 12 of 35 that’s winning basketball for sure.”
7 Responses
Kentucky is not the Denzel Aberdeen show nor the Ortega Oweh show, but that is what we have become this season. Throw in Dioubate and Garrison into that mix and it will be easy to see why we will have another double digit loss season that does nothing in the tournaments. We have some tough games coming up…Georgia, Auburn, Vanderbilt, and Florida again. If Nate Oats was coaching our team, we would have a shot at winning out as he would have us shooting 45 threes a game. That is where our strength lies, not challenging teams in the lane. Pope claimed he would have us shooting 35 threes a game and it hasn't happened once! Mark Pope is a good guy but he is not ready for being a big time coach at a blue blood school. He would be a wonderful doctor.
He might have JQ playing by now if he was a doctor.
We miss you Denzel. Imagine how good these Gators would be had you stayed and waited for NBA money. Good luck sir. Except against my Gators. GO GATORS!!! I hate this NIL garbage
I hate it to Donald
Being close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades so if all the Rah Rah fans are happy with that game against Florida then sit back and enjoy! Some say it was a team effort to get close with the gators? NO! If the rest of the team who played their asses off had told the two hero players and Garrison to go sit on the bench we might have won.The Proctologist Coach sure wasn’t going to tell them to PASS the Ball instead of Hero driving into seven footers! Then praising them gave me a bad case of the RED ASS! The Proctologist did say he made one mistake but he should’ve said I’m NO coach I’m just a cheerleader!
Rick you can be a fair weather fan all you want. I've been following the cats since the late 60's and there's always going to be good and the bad part how a team performs nothing has changed since basketball has been invented.
That is a fair point Cats79
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