Kentucky 85 - 47 Penn St. (Uncasville, Conn.) (No. 2,055)

From time to time, even the most dedicated basketball fan -- especially if he is a father -- will find himself forced to run errands when his team is playing. This is particularly likely to happen if it is mid-November and the team is playing a noon game. These afternoons can be very stressful for the nervous fan. How will the team do if the loyal fan is away from his usual post? Should he check the score -- given that checking the score has often seemed to correlate with bad results in the past? Did the team come out flat after the big victory over Kansas? How did the young kids react to playing a noon game? How did they react to playing in an arena (the Mohegun Sun Arena) or a place (Uncasville, Connecticut?) that was unfamiliar to them?

Such were the thoughts of at least one nervous fan as he traversed the crowded highways of northern Virginia. He remembered other Saturday afternoons during basketball season where the intrepid fan, checking for the score at last, was greeted with very disappointing news. And so, when he finally pulled out his smart phone, and saw that the Cats were up 78-37 with 7 and 1/2 minutes to go in the game, he was very, very excited and pleased to have Coach Calipari in charge. And when he saw that the Cats were up 47-15 at halftime, that Doron Lamb had another spectacular game (26 points), that Terrence Jones had 15 points and nine rebounds, and that Kyle Wiltjer chipped in 19 points, he felt that the team is playing really, really well for this time of year.

Tomorrow, the Cats will play the Old Dominion Monarchs, a typically canny crew from the Colonial Athletic Association, the best minor conference in the nation. In recent years, the CAA has sent George Mason and Virginia Commonwealth to the Final Four -- and ODU lost to Butler in last year's tourney by only a single basket. Plus we have another noon Eastern tip-off -- and I hate for UK to play while fans in the western half of the Commonwealth are still in church. But we will hope that when those fans get out of church, they will have some more good news.