Cats won't be bored with Missouri rematch

LEXINGTON, Ky. – This will be a test of focus. When top-ranked Kentucky visits struggling Missouri on Thursday night, will the Wildcats be bored before the basketball game even starts? They beat the Tigers by 49 points barely two weeks ago at Rupp Arena, after all.

"Well, we're playing them at their house. It's totally different," swears UK sharpshooter Devin Booker, who is one Cat with sufficient motivation as he'll play at his famous father's alma mater for the first time. "Our fans back at Rupp, they helped us a lot during that game. So I feel like their fans are going to try to do the same for them."

Coach John Calipari prefers to point out that Kentucky (19-0, 6-0 Southeastern Conference) led by just four points seven minutes into the first half of the previous meeting. And that Missouri's leading scorer, Johnathan Williams III, had an off night, hitting just 1 of 13 shots. And that second-leading scorer and prized freshman Montaque Gill-Caesar missed that game with an injury.

"This will change the complexion of the game," Calipari said. "They needed one more guy to mix it up, and that's what (Gill-Caesar) will do. Plus, he can score. He can score baskets for them, which they struggled to do."

Yeah, but forty-nine points. The Cats led by 26 at halftime and 40 with still eight minutes to go in the first meeting. The Tigers (7-12, 1-5) have lost five in a row, although they did take arguably the SEC's second-best team, Arkansas, to the wire on Saturday at Mizzou Arena.

None of that matters, Kentucky forward Marcus Lee said.

"We don't even remember how much we beat teams by. We're not rejoicing and looking back at the games that already happened. We're looking forward and looking for what's new and what else we need to do to get to our final goal," he said. And, given the previous margin, "they're definitely going to try to go twice as hard and go at us like there's nothing else to lose."

The Cats, meanwhile, might be mindful of all that's at stake from here on out. Win at Missouri and they're exactly halfway to an unprecedented 40-0 record. Booker said the "topic of the season" has been ignoring the opponent and turning the team's focus inward.

"We just have to play against ourself again," he said.

So is the pursuit of perfection a part of that internal competition? Will at some point chasing history stop being a crazy dream or a heavy burden and become the thing that drives this team forward as the wins continue to pile up?

"We don't ever talk about it. It hasn't entered my mind," Calipari said, pointing to his 2008 Memphis team that started 26-0, lost a close game at home to Tennessee and then won the next dozen by an average of 18 points to reach the NCAA title game. A loss "doesn't matter. It all depends on how we would deal with it. I know with Memphis what we did. We took that game, we cut it up and our kids took it on and went to another level."

Losing can be a wake-up call for good teams that have gotten bored with winning. The Golden State Warriors, who won 16 straight earlier this season and 13 of 14 before an overtime loss to the Chicago Bulls on Tuesday and own the NBA's best record, talked recently about how so much success can lull a team into a false sense of invincibility.

The Wildcats believe they can avoid that, though, and they get a chance to prove it in their rematch with Missouri.

"Get bored of winning? I've never heard of that," Booker said. "I don't think we'd get bored of winning. I don't think any of us want to lose."

Kyle Tucker can be reached at (502) 582-4361. Follow him on Twitter @KyleTucker_CJ.