GAINESVILLE, Fla.-- Florida still has a chance at playing in the NCAA tournament, however, the Gators do not have a large margin of error.

On Saturday, Mike White's team has the challenge of competing with No. 6 Kentucky. The Wildcats beat the Gators in their last meeting after a second-half rally, that saw the visitors dig themselves out of a 11-point hole.

White understands, Kentucky will provide an even bigger challenge at their place.

"Top 12 offense and defense, a pretty unique combination, right there. Believe they’re top 12 in the country in free-throw attempts to field-goal attempts. Top 10 or 12 or 15 in offensive rebounding percentage," White listed. "Live at the foul line. Dominate the paint. Don’t take a ton of 3s, but shoot good percentages. Run good stuff. Very solid. Probably as good as anyone in the country defensively, especially over the last several months. We saw that here.

"We shot 35 percent against a tough-nosed, long, athletic versatile defense. So, they pose a lot of problems going in there. How do you score? How do you hold your own in the paint? How do you rebound with ‘em? Huge challenge for us.”

“The challenge with them was, you know, just making sure we stopped, I think it was Tyler Herro, he scored a lot that game," added freshman guard Noah Locke. "PJ Washington was big on the boards, we just got to make sure we’re blocking out. Make sure we know the key guys, their strengths and stuff like that, and stopping them from doing what they can do.

"We just got to make sure we lock in on those things. If we do that, I feel we have a good chance of winning.”

White is also at a point of the season where he is dealing with fatigue. Freshmen like Locke and Andrew Nembhard have seen plenty of minutes on the court and have often gone with much rest. The first year Gators are "banged up."

"I am feeling good," said Locke. "Just a little sore but I’m all good though. I’m just sore right now, it’s not really that bad right now. It’s like once I get moving, I’m pretty fine.”

"All mental," White said about how Florida handled practice on Thursday. "We didn’t even get on the court. Met and filmed it up. We’ll get after it here in a little bit. Won’t go very long. Again, heavy minutes. Another overtime game. Not a lot of depth. Freshmen. A few guys kind of banged up a little bit. We’ll go very short today.”

White and company are hoping that the focus placed on mental preparation will help the Gators come out with a heightened level of intensity.

"Guys have to come in locked in, come ready to play, come ready to just play the game," said Locke. "Not really thinking about agendas, just playing as a team. We just have to play like it’s our last game, which I mean it is, but I mean you have to play with heart, play with.. just give it all you got. I mean it means a lot for us to win this game."

In addition to fatigue, White has had to find ways to work around a few of his veterans playing inconsistently. Although Jalen Hudson has found some momentum offensively in recent games, the opposite can be said for fellow senior KeVaughn Allen.

According to the Gators head coach, it has been frustrating having veterans that can be so up and down - especially when you are plotting your game plan in a close match up.

"Extremely. I could go on and on, but it just wouldn't do me any good. Wouldn't do our guys any good," he said on Friday. "Just searching and searching, which has probably led to our different offensive attacks throughout the season just because you never know with certain guys. You just don't know what you're going to get. You're trying to figure it out on the fly.

"Sometimes it changes game-to-game. Sometimes it changes within a game, within a half. A guy's confidence level, aggressiveness level, guy's rhythm -- and then sometimes you get a guy who's in a really good offensive rhythm and doesn't feel like guarding that night. You know you can't win if you keep this guy in the game. That's the challenge for all of us as coaches," added White. "Trust me, we'd all love the luxury; and it seems like we're about to play a team that, I don't want to talk for Cal, but he seems to have his guys defending, all of them connected, at a really high level. All of them in a pretty good rhythm offensively.

"I'd just as soon play five guys 40 minutes, make it simple. Let's have five plays that we run and we execute the heck out of them and guard our butts off. It'd be a lot easier that way. But we're going to continue to try to mix and match it and try to figure it out."

The Gators and the Wildcats will tip off at 2 p.m. on Saturday.

Gator Chomps

On KeVaughn Allen's struggles

"KeVaughn is pretty consistent with who he is. I'm not sure much phases him, good or bad. Just who he is. He's obviously really struggled lately. The positive with the type of guy he is, he could miss a bunch in a row and then rattle off eight. He can be somewhat engaged defensively and then all of a sudden have a half where he's unbelievable defensively. We're going to continue to try to motivate him to finish as strong as he possibly can here down the stretch of his senior year. If we're going to do something of significance here late, we've got to have him playing well."

On drawbacks of playing Bassett and Hayes together

" It does [have some drawbacks] Hayes was terrific. Dontay has gotten to where he pretty consistently plays hard, but these last few games -- like all of us -- he's got some mistakes he's got to clean up. As I tell our guys, if you become -- any of our bench guys -- if you become a really, really accountable guy, we need that because we need five of those guys. We'll play small, we'll play big, we'll play whatever. Dontay just need to continue to try to improve and get better and clean some stuff up. We'll always consider playing any type of way. We've played a bunch of different ways this year, just in this season. Obviously Kentucky has a bunch of strength on the interior. Maybe it's something we'll consider. A lot of factors: foul trouble, engagement in the game and attention to detail in all those things."

On whether or not he would make a different call late in OT vs. LSU after watching back film

"Yeah, probably not require Jalen [Hudson] to have to go manufacture it himself off of the bounce. Although he had done that a bunch in that current game, I hadn't put him in that type of situation before late game. Probably with the fact that KeVaughn had really been struggling, probably go with our ball-handler, play-maker, probably Andrew Nembhard in space with a ball screen."