GAINESVILLE, Fla. _ Timing is everything time of year in college basketball.
Coach Mike White's Florida Gators are entering the maw of March Madness hitting their stride and right on schedule.
Saturday's 80-67 win against No. 23 Kentucky earned the Gators the No. 3 seed in the SEC tournament and continued to bolster an NCAA resume that looked increasingly flimsy just a week ago.
"We're playing our best basketball of the year," White said.
But White also saw the ugly side of his up-and-down Gators, who watched a 23-point lead dwindle to nine before pulling away for good as a reported crowd of 10,558 at the O'Connell Center.
The win earned the Gators a regular-season sweep of the Wildcats for the first time since 2014, when UF reached the Final Four. At times, White's squad has looked capable of a similar run and other times appeared destined for the NIT.
White hopes the Gators (20-11, 11-7 SEC) have learned from the error of their ways and maintain the consistency shown during wins against Auburn, Alabama and Kentucky in the span of eight days.
"As soon as our guys think we have it figured out, we won't play well," White said.
The Gators rarely have played better this season than during the first half Saturday.
Redshirt junior shooting guard Jalen Hudson led the way on the team's Senior Day, following a 27-point outing at Alabama with a 22-point effort against Kentucky, including 17 during the first half.
Hudson's highlights included a high-flying dunk coming off the wing to ignite an early 8-0 run and give the Gators a 28-17 lead. Hudson later hit back-to-back 3-pointers to push UF's lead to 15 points, at 41-26.
"I'm just trying to be aggressive," Hudson said. "My teammates keep finding me. I'm just going to shoot it if I'm open."
Meanwhile, coach John Calipari's callow Wildcats, including four freshmen and one sophomore in the starting lineup, were undone by defensive lapses, the Gators' red-hot shooting and turnovers.
UF ended the first half leading 48-33 and 18-of-32 (56.3 percent) from the field, including 6-of-13 from 3-point range (46.2). The Gators scored 14 points off eight Kentucky turnovers.
"We put ourselves in a deep hole," Calipari said.
Kentucky (21-10, 10-8) would trail by as many as 23 points before mounting a second-half comeback where the Gators went ice-cold, going a stretch of more than eight minutes without a field goal.
During the stretch, a jumper by Kentucky's Nick Richards cut UF's lead to 65-53. Moments later, a layup by Shay Gilgeous-Alexander trimmed UF's lead to nine points.
Hudson, however, answered with a 3-pointer to rattled in to spark a 9-0 run.
"I think it hit every part of the rim," Hudson joked. "I get to halfcourt before it even goes in."
The pivotal run also included a dunk along the baseline by Keith Stone from KeVaughn Allen.
Allen, a junior, has struggled offensively all season. Saturday, he played one of his best all-around games at UF, finishing with 11 points, a team-high seven rebounds, a career-high seven assists and three steals.
"He was great," White said.
But the biggest assist of the night came from senior point guard Chris Chiozza.
A fan favorite the past four seasons, Chiozza received a standing ovation prior to tip-off during a Senior Day ceremony. Then with 6:06 left in the first half he found Stone for a 3-pointer, making Chiozza the school's all-time assist leader.
Chiozza would finished with just four assists, three turnovers and nine points, but he left the game to another standing ovation while doing the Gator chomp.
Fellow senior Egor Koulechov, a graduate transfer from Rice, left the game moments earlier and embraced White on the sideline. Koulechov finished with 16 points, shooting 5 of 7 from the floor and 4 of 6 from the free-throw line.
