Gators win their third straight.

GAINESVILLE — Timing is everything this time of year in college basketball.

Coach Mike White’s Florida Gators are entering March Madness right on schedule.

Saturday’s 80-67 win against No. 23 Kentucky earned the Gators the No. 3 seed in next week’s SEC Tournament and continued to bolster an NCAA resumé 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 unpredictable Gators, who watched a 23-point lead dwindle to nine before pulling away for good before a reported crowd of 10,558 at the O’Connell Center.

“This team is hard to forecast,” White said. “But I want to give my guys credit: we’ve gotten more consistent, we’ve gotten tougher.

“We hope there’s lot of basketball left for us.”

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 this postseason 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-toback 3-pointers to push UF’s lead to 15 points, at 41-26.

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 when the Gators went icecold, going more than eight minutes without a field goal.