Kentucky basketball 25-0 after routing South Carolina 77-43

A day after John Calipari said his team needed to crunch an opponent, Kentucky battered South Carolina 77-43. You could see — and almost hear — the crunching. But it wasn't exactly what the UK coach wanted.

"What we need is to be in a war where we get up 13, and then we push it to 20," Calipari said after Saturday's game. "Where the other team's battling and (the lead) is six, four, five, it gets to 13 and we get it to 20.

"That's where we have been lacking."

What Kentucky also lacked this day was a worthy opponent.

Kentucky did its part in matching the program record for a start to a season. UK's 25-0 record equals how the Hagan-Ramsey Cats began (and completed) the 1953-54 season with 25 straight victories. UK defended, executed and played with energy and zeal.

"We needed to play a game like this," Calipari said.

But South Carolina did not do any of that. The Gamecocks meekly absorbed the second-worst beating for Frank Martin in three seasons as South Carolina coach. Only a 75-36 loss at Florida on Jan. 30, 2013, was more lopsided.

"Didn't put up much of a fight today," Martin said. "And if we're not going to put up a fight, we're not talented enough to be able to play with a team like Kentucky. ... They outworked us, outran us, outrebounded us, out-screened us, out-toughed us."

Kentucky made half its shots (27 of 54) against a South Carolina defense rated the country's eighth-best.

Kentucky's defense, which had been AWOL recently, came back in dress blues. The Cats limited South Carolina to 23.6-percent shooting, which snapped a streak of five straight games in which opponents had shot with 40 percent or better accuracy.

When asked what pleased him most about the victory, leading scorer (14 points) Willie Cauley-Stein said, "Just getting back to defense. Today was the first time I've really seen our defense dominate somebody."

Well, not exactly. UK, which entered the game leading the nation in field-goal percentage defense (34.2 percent), had limited three earlier opponents to even worse shooting. But two (Kansas and Montana State) were in November, and the third was South Carolina last month.

At Alabama a month ago, Cauley-Stein said UK aimed not only to defend, but to demoralize. Mission accomplished.

"South Carolina's the type of team, they're going to drive you to death," he said. "If they can't get in the lane, now they're going to struggle. You're not going to shoot over us. We're too big.

"You can't get in the lane because we're too big. I don't know what you can do."

After his team made only five of 24 shots in the first half (20.8 percent) and ultimately matched the season low 43 points scored in the first game against Kentucky, Martin acknowledged how UK's defense damaged his team's psyche.

"We missed shots, and those missed shots led us to hang our heads," the South Carolina coach said. "And if you hang your head against a team like Kentucky, you see what happens."

The Gamecocks' struggle to score was not surprising, especially against Kentucky. South Carolina made four of 23 shots in the second half at Columbia last month. That made South Carolina 9-for-47 in the last 40 minutes against Kentucky's defense (19.1 percent) going into the second half Saturday.

The poor shooting followed form. South Carolina came into the game ranked last in league play in overall shooting (37.4 percent) and three-point shooting (28.8 percent).

The departure from recent form belonged to UK's defense, which had surrendered 10 or more baskets in five straight halves going into the game.

As poorly as South Carolina shot to begin the game (1-for-11), the Gamecocks missed their first nine shots to begin the second half.

Meanwhile, Cauley-Stein turned and hit a face-up jumper from the left side that helped UK expand its lead to 54-23 at the under-12 TV timeout.

It looked like the first half might have been South Carolina's hot-shooting half, relatively speaking. The Gamecocks made only four of their first 24 shots to begin the second half.

That left only one question: how deeply into the record book would the search for perspective go. Equaling Hagan-Ramsey might just be prelude.

"We have a chance to do something way bigger than just tying it," Cauley-Stein said.

This story was originally published February 14, 2015 at 11:11 AM.