In an unforgiving league like the SEC when you're the home favorite you have to capitalize.

Tonight Kentucky plays host to LSU. It's Senior Night, with only the trip to Mizzou on Saturday remaining on the regular season slate.

Cats Illustrated staff members share takes and picks before the game.

Jeff Drummond: Kentucky needs a good all-around performance in the home finale against LSU to help wash away the bad taste of a completely uncompetitive showing against No. 1 Auburn. The Cats are likely going to be underdogs in the season finale at Missouri, so you don't want the specter of riding a three-game losing streak into the postseason. LSU enters the matchup ranked No. 78 in the KenPom ratings, and the Tigers are particularly bad (100) on the offensive side of the floor. It would take an extremely poor defensive effort for this to be a close game. I think this game is more about the Cats getting right. Mark Pope & Co. have to find a way to get their shooters involved. They took only 17 3-pointers and made only four against Auburn, which doesn't give you a chance to beat anyone in this league. I'll be looking to see if they can get guys like Koby Brea and Ansley Almonor involved early in the game and more of a bench-scoring impact from guys like Travis Perry and Trent Noah. Give me Kentucky 84, LSU 72.

David Sisk: Kentucky certainly doesn’t want to drop this game. A win wouldn’t really help the Cats in NCAA seeding, but a loss would drop the team off the four seed line. LSU is one game out of the SEC basement, but they haven’t stopped playing hard. They have been competitive in just about every game. Cam Carter is going to be the toughest Tiger to defend. The 6-3 guard is averaging 16 points per game. On ball guards give them trouble, so I’m going to predict strong games from both Lamont Butler and Otega Oweh. Just take care of the games you are supposed to win. Kentucky 80 LSU 69.

Justin Rowland: LSU is ranked below No. 75 in the NET rankings, which currently means this is a Quadrant 3 game at Rupp for Kentucky. The Wildcats don't have any Q3 losses this year so that's surely something they want to avoid, as "no bad losses" is a part of the resume strength overall. Just as important, fans will want to see Kentucky put an ugly home loss behind them with the conference and NCAA tournaments approaching. There's no Jaxson Robinson the rest of the way but this veteran UK squad has been used to playing without missing pieces here or there for much of the season anyway. If Kentucky comes to play they should be okay tonight. It will be interesting to see how they respond after that humbling loss to Auburn, when they didn't seem to have much of a chance even early in the second half. The Tigers have not been good on the road in SEC play so it's easy for me to call for UK to win comfortably. Kentucky 84, LSU 74.