Kentucky held Kentavious Caldwell-Pope to seven points in their 57-44 win over Georgia.

“We put our best defender on him," said John Calipari. "We chased him. But he's good. I mean, he's really good. But this is a team where he knows, normally he can get by the guy guarding him and get something to the rim. Here, he's got 6-10 guys down in there and it's just a little bit tougher.”

Caldwell-Pope is averaging 16.5 points per 36 minutes in his freshman season, shooting a TS% of 52.3%.

Roy Williams and North Carolina will need to make several adjustments with Dexter Strickland out for the remainder of the season.

Reggie Bullock will be promoted to the starting lineup, while Stilman White will play more minutes at the backup point guard.

“It’s always difficult, because you do change the minutes, you do change the rotation, you do change habits,’’ said Williams. "Kendall [Marshall] is a guy, as a point guard, who really studies what his teammates like -- where they like the ball. We know, for a fact, that Dexter’s not just going to catch the ball and go up and shoot it, he’s going to put the ball on the floor, and if he can do that, he’s got a much greater chance of making it. And now, you’ve got somebody in the game that’s doing it different than Dexter. 

“So it takes a while to get smooth with the playing style … it changes. It changes how everything goes on the court out there. Sometimes those transitions are pretty easy, and sometimes they’re difficult. So we’re just going to have to wait and see.” 

Since defeating Ohio State, Bruce Weber's Illinois team has lost at Penn State and at home to Wisconsin.

The Badgers defeated Illinois on Sunday by a final score of 67-53.

Wisconsin guard Josh Gasser drew the assignment of controlling Brandon Paul, and was effective. Paul was 3-of-11 from the field, including missing two 3-point attempts.

"(Paul) has probably been the best player in the league the last couple of games," Jordan Taylor said. "Josh did a great job of coming in and slowing him down."

Florida has received improved production from their bench during its three-game winning streak.

The Gators' bench outscored LSU's bench by a 24-10 margin in Saturday's 76-64 win.

“Our bench is deep and everybody provides something different,” Florida junior forward Erik Murphy said. “It's always good to get that kind of production off the bench.”

Florida is 8-0 when their bench outscores their counterpart.

Mike Rosario had 11 points against LSU and is averaging 9.3 over the past three games.

Connecticut lost by a 70-67 final at home to Cincinnati on Wednesday with Kemba Walker in attendance.

The loss demonstrated the inconsistency of the UConn bigs, how the offense struggles when Jeremy Lamb's usage goes down and how the defense is susceptible to three-point shots.

"I just had a little talk with Kemba about a couple of players he played with,"Calhoun said. "He said it doesn't look like them. That's exactly how I feel, too. It doesn't look like them.

"I couldn't be more disappointed with some of the guys on the team."

Alex Oriakhi and Andre Drummond combined for 3-for-16 shooting on the inside.

"I thought we'd have a great advantage inside and that didn't look like it worked out very well," Calhoun said. "We had two big guys against four guards, so one had a guard on him an awful lot of the time and just didn't get anything inside done."

Thomas Robinson of Kansas is the leader in the Player of the Year straw poll released by ESPN. Robinson received 25 first place votes and 98 total points.

Jared Sullinger of Ohio State received 13 first place votes and 73 total points.

Doug McDermott of Creighton received 10 first place votes and 69 total points.

Anthony Davis of Kentucky and John Jenkins of Vanderbilt received the other two first place votes. Davis had 12 points in total.

Harrison Barnes of North Carolina was ranked fifth with 11 points, followed by Kevin Jones (West Virginia), Perry Jones III (Baylor), Jenkins, Draymond Green (Michigan State), Michael Kidd-Gilchrist (Kentucky), Jeremy Lamb (UConn), Damian Lillard (Weber State), Jorge Gutierrez (Cal), Julian Mavunga (Miami Ohio), Mike Scott (Virginia), Marcus Demon (Missouri) and Kendall Marshall (North Carolina).

Austin Rivers appears to going through a rut that began after his Dec. 30th performance against Western Michigan.

Since a 20-point effort in Duke’s win over Western Michigan, Rivers has averaged 8.6 points per game while only shooting 36.4 percent from the floor and 21.4 percent for 3-pointers.

“I just think he’s going through what a freshman goes through,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “There’s adjustments to everything. Overall, he’s done it really well.

“There’s adjustments to more physicality, speed, height, experience. There’s not one adjustment – all freshmen have to go through it. He’s done it fairly well to average about 14 points per game with the schedule we’ve had. He has to continue to make those adjustments.”

Ohio State standout Jared Sullinger blames himself for the fifth-ranked Buckeyes' most recent loss.

"There were times in the Illinois game where I just kind of took a break on the defensive end instead of the offensive end and it cost us," Sullinger said, referring to a 79-74 setback on Tuesday. "Honestly, I was one of those people who played hard when they wanted to. I have to stop that."

Sullinger promises to recommit himself and make up for that lapse when the Buckeyes host No. 7 Indiana in a big rematch on Sunday.

"Coach (Thad) Matta always talks about how we have another gear, where we can take our games to the next level," Sullinger said. "I guess our coaches, they feel like I'm the best player so they feel like if I take my effort and leadership to a whole other level, everybody else is going to follow me."