Florida women upset No. 6 Kentucky in Lexington

By Adam Silverstein
January 5, 2014

Florida Gators women’s basketball (12-4, 2-0 SEC) pulled off one of the biggest victories in program history on Sunday afternoon, hanging an 83-73 road defeat on the No. 6 Kentucky Wildcats (13-2, 1-1 SEC) at Memorial Coliseum in Lexington, KY.

Sunday’s victory broke a six-game losing streak for UF against UK and extended the Gators’ current winning streak to eight games, their longest since the 2008-09 season.

Florida won due to some tremendous play from its two backcourt stars.

Senior guard Jaterra Bonds, the reigning Southeastern Conference Player of the Week, led all players with a game-high 23 points on 6-of-14 shooting. She hit 10-of-12 free throws and also added six rebounds on the afternoon.

Freshman G Ronnie Williams posted a double-double of 19 points and 10 boards for Florida, going 9-for-13 from the field and registering two blocks in the contest.


The Gators led by a single point at the half but coughed up their lead and trailed the Wildcats by nine with 12 minutes to play.

An 8-1 run got Florida back in the game, but the Gators were still fighting from behind with less than four minutes left.

At that point, UF pieced together a 6-0 scoring stretch to jump ahead 75-70 and never trailed again, hitting 6-of-8 free throw attempts over the final 1:28.

Florida head coach Amanda Butler is now 11-35 in her seven-year tenure against ranked opponents. The Gators went 0-5 against top 25 teams in her first season (2007-08), 4-3 in her second (2008-09) and 6-19 combined over the subsequent three seasons. Last season, UF was 0-8 against ranked opponents.

Sunday’s win was Florida’s first victory against a top 25 team since defeating No. 16 Ohio State on March 17, 2012. It is also the Gators’ first win against a top 10 program under Butler, who was 0-17 previously in such games.

Florida had lost 19-straight regular season games against top 10-ranked opponents, earning its last victory to such a team on Feb. 26, 2006 in an overtime contest on the road against No. 5 Tennessee. UF also beat No. 2 LSU in overtime 10 days prior.

2 Comments

  1. SW FL Joe says:

    Congrats to the Lady Gators now go show the men how to hit free throws to close out a game

    • Ken (CA) says:

      they actually had trouble with that too, keeping UK withing 5-7 points until right at the end, at one point missing 3 in a row and i think 4 of 5. I caught much of the 2nd half, as I flipped through channels and was shocked it was on some local channel here in CA. They played tough, was really impressed. Just think, it is early, but ahead of UK, Tenn and UGA in conference, tied with LSU for first place….not a bad start, although the schedule is pretty brutal next few games

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