Kentucky at Florida: 2020-21 storylines for SEC matchup

Florida’s personal fouls

Through six games played Coach White has split the playing time among his players. Split it in a fashion that eight players average over 17 minutes per game and seven players average under nine minutes. One of those eight players is leading scorer Keyontae Johnson (16 ppg) who will not be playing for the remainder of the season, despite being healthy enough to rejoin the team.

Losing the SEC preseason player of the Year before entering conference play has put a huge hole in Coach White’s rotation. One of the consequences of the introduction of Anthony Duruji into the starting line-up is that Florida now has two starters who average over three fouls per game and another starter among the three players who average over two and a half fouls.

The Gators have had just one player foul out, but in three games had at least two players in each game to commit four fouls. The problem with fouls, five will cause a player to sit on the bench permanently, but time on the court is lost when a coach has to protect a player from getting their fifth. In addition, a team ends up giving up a lot of free-throw attempts.

The Gators currently give up 24.5 free-throw attempts per game, only 29 other teams in Division I basketball surrender more. For their part, Kentucky is not even in the top-200 in attempted field goals, and their 65% from the line fairs even worse. The free-throw line will not be the main concern for Florida, but key players saddled with fouls could be.