Cats make improvements in all areas.

Better start? More toughness? Stingier defense?

How about a performance that would have given NBA All-Stars a run for their money?

John Calipari asked for all three after his team’s first exhibition game against Transylvania. What he got Monday night in the final tune-up before the regular season was a performance that may never be matched again at Kentucky.

Ever.

The Wildcats not only answered the call of their head coach, they picked up the telephone, threw it against the wall and smashed it with a baseball bat. Playing like they had lost by 20 to Transy, UK beat Morehouse into submission Monday night, walloping the Maroon Tigers 125-40 in front of 20,194 fans at Rupp Arena.

“We were better,” Coach Cal said so nonchalantly you would have thought he was joking. “That’s what I was looking for.”

The 85-point win was the largest margin of victory in an exhibition game, shattering the previous record of 71 points in a 119-48 smacking of China in 1982.

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Yahoo Runs the numbers on UK's Morehouse amazing game.

Poor Division II Morehouse College was on the receiving end of a 125-40 shellacking that in many ways was even more one-sided than the final score suggests. Here are 10 numbers that better tell the story of what presumably will be the biggest mismatch of the college basketball season:

1. TWENTY-SIX: The number of consecutive baskets Kentucky's five starters made to start the game before Marquis Teague snapped the streak when he missed a three-pointer with 14:07 left in the second half. The starters finished 31 of 34.

2. FIFTY-SEVEN: The margin with 4:55 left in the first half after a three-pointer from Teague increased Kentucky's lead to a ridiculous 63-6. At that point, the Wildcats were on pace to score 168 points.

3. EIGHTY-NINE: Kentucky's largest lead, achieved on a Darius Miller jumper that made the score 125-36 with 2:06 remaining.

4. SEVENTY-SEVEN: Kentucky's largest margin of victory in a regular season game, a feat the Wildcats achieved against Georgia in 1956. Had this game counted in the record books, Kentucky's 85-point margin would have broken that record.

5. SEVENTY-FIVE: Percentage of shots Kentucky made from the field in the first half.

6. SEVENTEEN: Percentage of shots Morehouse made from the field in the first half.

7. ONE: Kentucky player who failed to score. Walk-on Brian Long did not attempt a shot in seven minutes of second-half playing time. Fellow walk-on Sam Malone got into the scoring column with a layup with 3:31 to play.

8. SIXTY-EIGHT: Kentucky's margin when Shabazz Muhammad, the nation's No. 1 recruit, tweeted: "86-18 with 16 mins to go all I can sa is wowwwww lol !!!!" Muhammad will decide in the spring between Kentucky, UCLA, USC, UNLV and others.

9. TWENTY-NINE: Unanswered points scored by Kentucky in one seven minute stretch to increase its lead from 34-6 to 63-6. Incredibly enough, Morehouse only called timeout once during that run.

10: TWENTY-FOUR: The margin of Georgia's 74-50 exhibition victory over Morehouse in an exhibition game on Friday night. Does that mean Kentucky is 61 points better than the Bulldogs? Probably not, but we'll find out for sure during SEC play in January.

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UK tops Pomeroy's stat-based college basketball ratings

Kentucky tops the 2011 NCAA Men's Basketball Rankings at the Pomeroy Statistical Genius Laboratory.


1. Kentucky
2. Ohio St. 
3. North Carolina
4. Duke
5. Syracuse
6. Connecticut
7. Pittsburgh
8. Louisville
9. Vanderbilt
10. Wisconsin
11. Kansas 
12. Florida
13. Temple
14. Missouri 
15. Baylor 
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KSTV: Willie Cauley talks UK

Marquis Teague Post Game Transy

Coach Cal right about the need to improve.

Let’s get something out of the way: John Calipari’s Kentucky team defeated cross-town school Transylvania 93-57 Wednesday night before 21,024 fans at Rupp Arena. Following a sluggish start, UK won its first game of the year, easily averting a 100-year upset in the waiting to a Division III school with the help of Terrence Jones’ 22 points and 12 rebounds.

But despite nearly doubling up the Pioneers, Coach Cal maintained a work-in-progress mentality following his team’s first real dress rehearsal.

“We have a long way to go,” Calipari said. “I think everyone knows it.  … The good news is everybody in this building saw it; anybody that watched on TV saw it. They also see we’re not tough enough.”

Hmmm, sound familiar? Rewind one week ago to the Blue-White Scrimmage.

“Everybody’s excited because you saw a lot of high-flying dunking, blocking, tipping,” Calipari said after that scoring barrage last week. “That doesn’t win.”

Maybe Coach Cal wasn’t just blowing smoke. Maybe it wasn’t just coach’s speak. Maybe he’s got a point.

After all, 230 combined points in a scrimmage is a ton of points in whatever way you choose to look at it. If you choose to view it from a defensive standpoint, as Calipari did after the scrimmage, one begins to understand that Kentucky, in spite of its gargantuan size, towering length and scorching speed, is far from defensively sound in the early going.

Freshman forward Anthony Davis (his injury was just a cramp) finished with eight blocks, including a volleyball spike into a Transy cheerleader’s face in the second half, but Kentucky’s perimeter defense allowed the Pioneers to bury 12 3-pointers, most of them coming early.

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Cats roll past Transy

Head coach John Calipari’s instant reaction from his office at Rupp Arena following Kentucky’s 97-53 exhibition victory over Transylvania.

Terrence Jones ready to lead UK

The idea -- or maybe more accurately, the hope -- was to take the all-boy bundle of energy and tire him out.

Run him like you would a golden retriever puppy.

And so Ava Mashia would pack everything she could get her hands on -- football, basketball, tennis racket, baseball and bat -- and grab hold of her nephew and head to the park. They would play for hours, feasting on a sports smorgasbord where neither deference for your elders nor charity to a child was allowed.

"I never let him win, not once,'' Mashia said. "He wasn't going to win at anything until he earned it.''

Eventually Terrence Jones earned it, his aunt the first victim in a basketball ladder climb that took no prisoners, only wins, across the state of Oregon.

Now in his second season at Kentucky, Jones is hoping to do the same to the college game.

With yet another loaded freshman class, Kentucky always was going to be good this season. When Jones eschewed the NBA and elected to return for his sophomore season, most everyone agreed the Wildcats could be great. "I told Terrence, you look at those freshmen and you say, 'You guys are really good, but you aren't better than me,''' coach John Calipari said. "He's practicing that way. He's trying to say, 'Look, I went through this. I just went to the Final Four.'''

It is more than Jones' experience that will determine Kentucky's results; it's his maturity.

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UK recruit Gary Harris, nearing a decision?

The 6-foot-4 Harris has visited Purdue, Indiana and Kentucky. He still has his final visit scheduled to Michigan State on Nov. 5.  Fishers, Ind., Hamilton Southeastern High School star basketball senior Gary Harris has already been on three of his four official visits.  And while his father, Gary Sr., said the younger Harris is still “open” but he’s getting closer and closer to making a decision.  The finality is near,” Harris Sr. said. “Obviously, at this point and time it’s a lot of dotting the ‘I’s’ and crossing the ‘T’s’. He wants to make sure he knows everything, asks all the right questions. He’s trying to wind is down.”
Harris Sr., said “the plan” is for his son to sign a national letter-of-intent with one of the four schools during the early signing period that begins on Nov. 9.


Not only is Harris thinking about where he’ll attend college but he plays football and Hamilton Southeast is in the second round of the playoffs and one of the favorites to win the state title. Harris has 34 catches, 697 yards and 10 touchdowns.

“I never want to say never but the plan is for him to sign (then),” Harris Sr. said. “As far as a plan or anything, we have not talked about specifics yet.”

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John Calipari At Final Practice Before Exhibition Game