Kentucky 86 - 64 Lamar (No. 2,064)

In my life, I have followed UK games under many different conditions. In 1979, I listened to UK's 101-100 win over Alabama in the SEC Tournament on a transistor radio in the midst of a raucous crowd watching Heath play Lone Oak in the Second District tournament. In 1986, I listened to UK's loss to LSU in the NCAA quarter-finals while riding in a car from Knoxville to Nashville. Last year, I listened to the UK-Arkansas game on a smart phone in a hotel room in Pittsburgh. I've gotten UK scores from SportsCenter, from the Internet, and from telephone calls. But I don't like following the Cats under such adverse circumstances. I want to be at home, in front of my TV, with Mike Leach and Tom Pratt on the radio.

This game was played while I was on pilgrimage to western Kentucky, in the lovely town of Marion, and it was on ESPNU -- a channel not broadcast on the local cable package. So the only way to watch the game was to boot up ESPN3 and hope that the picture would hold out long enough to see the action. About every two minutes or so, however, the picture would freeze -- usually with a UK shot hanging in mid-air -- and I quickly tired of this method. So I turned off the game with the Cats leading 25-14 and devoted my time to Holiday visitations. As a result, I have little to say about these proceedings, other than to note that Jones returned from his injury but was merely OK (9 points, six rebounds), that Lamar is actually quite a good team (they are heavy favorites in the Southland Conference), and that Calipari was quite unhappy with the Cats. This quote from Calipari was, I thought, as good a summary of UK basketball as we are likely to get all year:

"You can't hide here. This is Kentucky. There isn't a rock big enough, no cracks big enough. You're out there, and either you're going to perform or you're not, and there is no excuse why you're not. Like I said, we've got a ways to go."