By Ashley Scoby
Special to NKyTribune
You could say that No. 1 Kentucky won a basketball game on Saturday night.
But you could also say that No. 1 Kentucky put forth a soul-thrashing beat-down of the Auburn Tigers (110-75), initiated an intra-team dunk contest and made the Rupp Arena court the Wildcats’ own personal playground. Kentucky didn’t just want blood; they wanted buckets of it to stack up and dunk over.
The 27-0 Wildcats went from zero to 100 mph in about 11 minutes, amassing a 30-4 lead by the 9:17 mark of the first half. A UK student held up a sign in the eRupption zone reading “If you’re playing us, it’s already too late” – a play off the new rap album from John Calipari’s friend, Drake. And the assertion wasn’t far off – Auburn was outmanned from the beginning.
“The last time I was down 30-4, I was down 30-8, 1995, UC-Riverside-Southern Indiana, Division II National Championship in Louisville, Kentucky,” Pearl said after the game, pausing for a moment.
“This game reminded me nothing of that game. We weren’t coming back.”
Kentucky’s 27th straight win to open this season ties the 1995-96 UK team for longest single-season win streak in school history. With 110 points, the Wildcats scored the most they have since 2002, when they scored 115 against Tennessee State. UK’s 62 points in the paint were the most by an SEC team all season. John Calipari won his 100th game at Rupp, jumping to a 100-4 record at home since he’s been at the helm.
Six Wildcats scored in double figures (Karl-Anthony Towns 19, Aaron Harrison 18, Andrew Harrison 12, Devin Booker 11, Tyler Ulis 10, Dakari Johnson 13). Kentucky set a season-high for field goal percentage at 64.7 percent. The numbers could go on for as long as Kentucky’s combined wingspans.
By halftime, Kentucky had doubled up Auburn, 52-26. And although the Tigers played UK much closer in the final 20 minutes (they were out-scored “only” 58-49), the hole they’d dug themselves into was too much.
The 58 points Kentucky scored in the second half were highlighted by several high-flying slams that could have competed with a Harlem Globetrotters show.
At the 10:21 mark of the second half, the stat sheet will forever read “Good! Dunk by Lee, Marcus.” But Lee’s dunk to give UK a 78-46 lead was simultaneously an offensive rebound and a chance to not only humiliate Auburn, but also embarrass his own teammate. Both he and Johnson leaped to grab a Booker miss, but as he did so, Lee knocked Johnson to the ground, twisted his own body around and dunked over everyone below all in one fluid motion.
“I’ve never had that happen before,” Johnson said. “My first thought – I was trying to get the offensive rebound and I kind of got mad because I thought someone took it away from me, but it was my teammate.”
Even further into garbage time, with UK holding a 93-61 lead with 6:19 remaining, Towns ripped down a rebound (he finished with 10) and got it to Ulis, who was facing Towns. Instead of turning around to lead the offense down-court, Ulis casually flipped the ball behind his back to a speeding-into-open-space Cauley-Stein, who threw down a two-handed windmill jam that could have accumulated quite a few points during an NBA All-Star dunk contest.
And with the way they were playing, the Wildcats probably could have accumulated quite a few points in an actual NBA game, too.
“We’ve been snowed in all week,” Lee said. “We’ve been bored and couldn’t leave our rooms, so we had to get all of our energy out and we did that today.”
Ashley Scoby is a senior journalism major at the University of Kentucky and a KyForward sports writer. She has reported on the Wildcats for wildcathoops.com, vaughtsviews.com andkysportsreport.com as well as for newspapers in Danville and Glasgow. She will begin a summer internship with Sports Illustrated magazine in New York this June.