BATON ROUGE, La. — Marquis Teague missed a driving shot late in Kentucky's 74-50 victory at Louisiana State on Saturday. As if on a pogo stick, Terrence Jones went up for the rebound once, twice, thrice. Finally, Jones tipped in a fourth attempt.
UK Coach John Calipari suggested it was a significant moment brilliantly disguised in the mind-numbing final minutes of a blowout.
"When a guy is going for the ball four straight jumps, c'mon," Calipari said. "That's what we've all been waiting for."
Jones, the Southeastern Conference's Pre-season Player of the Year and its mid-season enigma, at long last looked like his old self. Or, better put, his young self as Kentucky's freshman star last season.
Jones scored a season-high 27 points and grabbed nine rebounds, barely missing his first double-double of the season. He blocked three shots and made two steals. A 7-for-16 free-throw shooter the previous two games, he hit seven of eight foul shots against LSU.
Numbers aside, Jones transformed Kentucky from superior, as it's No. 1 ranking suggests, to perhaps that exceptional level reserved for Kentucky's national championship teams.
"He makes us different," said Calipari, saying a lot without saying a lot.
When asked about the play in which Jones repeatedly leaped, Calipari said, "That's the guy I want. That's the guy people want to see. That's the kind of guy people want to play with and coach. ...
"That wins. That other guy, you lose with."
That other guy was the Jones who seemed to struggle all season to find his bearings. Of course, the nadir came at Indiana, where Calipari benched Jones in the final minutes of a game that required both teams to search their souls for hidden reserves of resolve.
"Some guys, they stepped up and took on the challenge more than older guys," Jones said of Kentucky's freshman stars this season.
At LSU, Jones answered Calipari's repeated appeals to put his stamp on this Kentucky team.
"He just takes a lot of pressure off all these young kids, and he needs to," Calipari said.
Repeating a theme he's mentioned in his two earlier seasons as UK coach, Calipari said veterans must lead the way as the grind of a season enters the time to make memories or fade away.
"Freshmen, you can't expect them to carry the load," Calipari said. "At times, we've been doing that."
Kentucky, which improved to 21-1 overall and an SEC-best 7-0, broke it open about midway through the game. In a nine-minute segment that included 13 straight points by Jones, the Cats exploded a 25-24 first-half lead to a 52-30 suffocation with 14 minutes to play.
Freshman point guard Teague saw a hot hand to feed and kept feeding it.
"He was scoring at will pretty much in the post," Teague said of Jones.
LSU (12-9, 2-5 SEC), followed the course of many Kentucky opponents. The Tigers tried to push UK around. If there had been a three-knockdown rule, star freshman Anthony Davis would have been a technical knockout.
Enter Jones, who said he drew strength from Malcolm White's flagrant-foul take-down of Davis.
"The only way we can redeem that is by continuing to play hard," Jones said.
Calipari suggested that no UK player was better equipped to be the redeemer than Jones, a 6-foot-9, 252-pound dynamo this day.
" 'Terrence, you negate it better than anybody we play,' " Calipari said he told Jones. " 'Now, go play. Want the contact. You create the contact. You go be physical in there.'
"He can do it. He just has to want to do it."
In the first half, Kentucky showed it could vary from its customary inside scoring.
Even though three of LSU's players picked up two fouls each inside the first nine minutes, Kentucky somehow managed to get outscored 8-6 in the paint. Freshman Johnny O'Bryant III accounted for six of LSU's points and none of the fouls. He finished with 12 points and nine rebounds.
LSU closed within one, 25-24, when freshman Anthony Hickey's fast-break lob led to a dunk by Storm Warren. That was one of the few highlights for Hickey, Kentucky's Mr. Basketball last season, who didn't score until the 9:47 mark of the second half.
Kentucky re-established inside dominance after intermission. Barely two minutes into the second half, the Cats — or rather, Jones — matched the six points from the paint of the first half.
UK exceeded that production when Jones posted up for a basket with 17:02 left.
Miller described the impact of an active, engaged Jones as "a huge difference."
"He's like the key part of the team, one of the best players," he said. "When he gets it going, it makes it a lot easier for everybody else. It opens up stuff for everybody else when they've got to double-team him."
Calipari called the Jones-led performance the best Kentucky has played. "We beat anybody playing this way," he said.
LSU Coach Trent Johnson suggested it might have been the first of several opportunities for Louisianians to see a stellar Kentucky team in the flesh.
"They will be back in New Orleans, probably twice," he said, a reference to the upcoming SEC Tournament and Final Four. "... Let's not over-analyze this. Let's not just critique my kids. Because sometimes you have to tip your hat to who is better."
