ATHENS, Ga. -- Kentucky remained in a first-place tie with Florida in the SEC with a thrilling 82-77 victory at Georgia on Saturday that featured 13 ties and 15 lead changes.

"Anytime we win a road game in our league I'm ecstatic," Kentucky coach John Calipari said. "I'd rather learn from a close win than a loss."

The No. 13 Wildcats (22-5, 12-2 SEC) won the game in part by hitting 17 straight free throws down the stretch. Eight of those were by freshman point guard De'Aaron Fox, who scored 10 of Kentucky's final 13 points over the final 2:07.

"This game was knocking down free throws," Fox said. "I just want people to know I can step up in the big moments. Like I've said before, there's been different guys stepping up in those moments and today it was me."

The Wildcats were 23 for 28 from the foul line.

"I loved it. We made free throws, we attacked," Calipari said. "I like the fact that De'Aaron missed two free throws and then came back and made eight in a row."

Fox and freshman guard Malik Monk each scored 16 points. Freshman forward Bam Adebayo had 13 points, eight rebounds and a huge blocked shot that enabled Kentucky to take the lead for good in the closing minute.

But Kentucky also got a huge bump from its senior reserves. Dominque Hawkins and Mychal Mulder each scored nine points and Derek Willis had a team-high 12 rebounds to go with seven points.

"Dom was great and Mychal's playing as well as he's ever played in a Kentucky uniform right now," Calipari said. "Dom has saved us. He's saved us for a couple games now. You look at it and I think he deserves more minutes, and we're gonna have to cut some guys' minutes. Derek did some good stuff today. He's getting more minutes now which gives him more opportunities to rebound."

Junior guard J.J. Frazier scored a career-high 36 points for Georgia (15-12, 6-8).

"J.J. was ridiculous and controlled the whole game," Calipari said. "We had to trap him at the end just to make somebody else try to beat us. I had no choice because of what was going on. We just started sending people at him."

It took less than two minutes for the game to take a major momentum shift when Georgia leading scorer Yante Maten went down with a knee injury at the 18:25 mark.

Sophomore guard Isaiah Briscoe drove the lane to score Kentucky's first points. He was bumped and landed into Maten, who had his leg firmly planted. Maten, who averages 19.3 points, returned to the bench midway through the first half in a brace with an ice pack.

"Obviously, without Yante we had to play a little different at times, and quite frankly, we just didn't rebound the ball in the second half," Georgia coach Mark Fox said. "We had given them I think one or two offensive rebounds in the first half, but as the game wore on, our big guys just wore down. But our kids competed. I feel terrible for them and our fans."

Despite the absence of Maten, the Wildcats held only a 33-31 halftime lead. Monk had eight points and five assists. Adebayo had eight points on 4-of-5 shooting. Kentucky shot 46.2 percent but had nine turnovers.

Georgia got 14 points from Frazier and six from Parker. The Bulldogs shot 45.8 percent despite missing 7 of 8 from 3-point range. Georgia also had nine first-half turnovers.

NOTES: Kentucky leads the series 123-26, including 42-17 in Athens. ... Georgia's Yante Maten is the only player to move from one preseason player of the year watch list to another, from Karl Malone (power forward) to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (center). ... Kentucky G Malik Monk averages 21.4 points. No John Calipari-coached player ever averaged better than 21.2 points.