The SEC men's basketball tournament will wrap up Sunday afternoon at the Georgia Dome with a marquee matchup in the championship game: Florida vs. Kentucky.
They are the league's two highest-ranked teams -- Florida No. 12 and Kentucky No. 15 in the Associated Press poll -- and they split two regular-season meetings.
They advanced to the championship game with different sorts of victories in Saturday's semifinals -- Florida trailing by as many as 12 points before rallying to beat Vanderbilt 77-66 and Kentucky leading by as many as 26 points en route to a 72-58 victory over Alabama.
The final matches this year's SEC regular-season champion, Florida, vs. last year's tournament champion, Kentucky. The Gators carry a 26-6 record and the Wildcats a 24-8 mark into the 1 p.m. game.
"I think it will be a really good game, and I don't know who I would necessarily give the advantage to," Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said Saturday night. "I think it could be a very close game -- two very high quality teams."
Then Stallings thought of one potential difference maker: Kentucky's support in the Georgia Dome, where Saturday's crowd of 21,728 was made up overwhelmingly of Wildcats fans.
"Obviously Kentucky doesn't have to play on the road. It'll be like a home game for them," Stallings said. "So that may give them a little bit of an advantage because they have been really good at home all year and not much on the road."
Another factor, though, could be the status of two key Kentucky players, DeAndre Liggins and Doron Lamb, both of whom injured their left ankles late in Saturday's victory over Alabama.
Liggins described his injury as "just a minor tweak" and said he'll "be fine" Sunday. Lamb's injury appeared potentially more serious, but he said: "I'm playing [Sunday]."
Kentucky coach John Calipari said Lamb could be doubtful for the game, but Calipari also indicated that injuries sometimes prove not as significant as they initially appear. "One thing I've learned with some of these young kids, they have the pain threshold of a fourth grader," Calipari said.
The home team took both of the teams' regular-season meetings:
- Florida won 70-68 in Gainesville on Feb. 5. A 3-point attempt by Kentucky's Brandon Knight came up short at the end.
- Kentucky won 76-68 in Lexington on Feb. 26. Darius Miller scored a career-high 24 points for the Wildcats.
The teams finished the regular season first and second in the SEC East standings -- Florida at 13-3, Kentucky at 10-6.
The SEC title game isn't the only major item, of course, on the teams' agendas Sunday. Several hours after the game, they will learn their seeds and destinations in the NCAA tournament. But first, they figure they might as well win a championship in the Georgia Dome.
"This is my last go-around, and I want to leave it all in Atlanta," Kentucky senior forward Josh Harrellson said. Then he added: "I'm trying to save some for the next tournament ... but right now we're just focused on this one."
"Kentucky's a great team, and it's always a great rivalry," Florida guard Erving Walker said. "We're still trying to get better because everybody knows the NCAA tournament is real. That's the main tournament we want to win. And we want to win the SEC tournament."
