Game Glance: UK-Florida

Another opponent desperately needing a win to improve its NCAA Tournament chances awaits Kentucky on Tuesday night in Gainesville, Fla.

Florida has lost three games in a row and four of its last five. UK is still tied for first in the SEC with Texas A&M despite losing to Vanderbilt on Saturday.

When: 7 p.m., Tuesday, March 1.

Where: Stephen C. O’Connell Center; Gainesville, Fla.

TV: ESPN

It’s that time of year again where John Calipari starts talking about the “tweaks” he has implemented. In 2013-14, Calipari said he had tweaked something just before the SEC Tournament. As it turned out, it had to do with Andrew Harrison driving and kicking the ball out in order to create more assists. UK went on to lose in the National Championship after struggling through most of the regular season.

Naturally, Calipari didn’t disclose what the tweak would be.

“It’s not a wholesale change from what we do, but y0u basketball Bennies will have an idea of what I did,” Calipari said. “Most of you in this room will have no idea what I tweaked. But the people who really follow it, study it, will say ‘well this is what he just did.’”

The tweak is likely to get the big men involved in a way where they can be more effective. The frontcourt has played excellent some games and then played really bad in other games. The previous game against Vanderbilt was a case of the frontcourt playing poorly. Marcus Lee’s nine points and six rebounds were basically the only production the Wildcats got against the Commodores.

Some of the struggles in the frontcourt seem to be related to mental issues and Calipari said the tweak would involve a mental “reboot,” in some ways, but it’s not solely focused on it.

“Some of it is mental, but the other part is you’re changing how they think about playing,” Calipari said. “You’re changing the mentality of how they’re doing this. That gets them, especially the guys that need it.”

UK’s star point guard has been so good all season, but he had his first “dud,” as John Calipari called it, against Vanderbilt. Ulis shot 5-20 from the field and went 0-7 from 3-point range. Ulis has played the most minutes on the team this year, but he didn’t believe his off-night could be contributed to being tired.

“No, I was fine,” Ulis said. “My legs were good. I just had an off-shooting night. I wish I would have shot the ball better, maybe it would have been a different type of game. But it happens.”

Since he wasn’t up to his normal standards, the loss was more difficult than normal for Ulis.

“Yeah, it was pretty hard on me because of the way I played, but I’m over it now,” Ulis said. “I gotta move on to the next game.”

Willis Watch

Going into the season, who would have thought Derek Willis would arguably be the third most valuable player on the team? Willis provided floor spacing, solid rebounding and most importantly, another scoring option to help supplement the production from Tyler Ulis and Jamal Murray.

Willis has missed the last two games with an ankle injury he sustained in the second half against Texas A&M on Feb. 20. No UK player besides Murray has made a three in the past two games. The team shot a combined 0-17 from three outside of Murray against Alabama and Vanderbilt.

Calipari said on Monday that Willis will not play against Florida but hopes he can play in the regular season finale against LSU on Saturday.

“Without Derek, it is hard to space the floor, but hopefully he gets back soon,” Ulis said.