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The Kentucky Wildcat mascot celebrates following the 88-44 victory over Drexel on Monday. The victory was the 2,000th in the history of Kentucky basketball.

Calipari admitted the math was difficult. He wasn’t sure his talented but largely inexperienced Wildcats could get to 2,000 before the Tar Heels.

Wall and company did their best to ease his mind.

Before a crowd that included Gov. Steve Beshear, former coach Joe B. Hall and program luminaries like Kenny Walker and Jamal Mashburn, Kentucky played with an urgency more befitting late-March.

Kentucky needed less than four minutes to build a double-digit lead behind the kind of intensity that was lacking in a ho-hum win over Austin Peay on Saturday. “We can’t play that bad against these guys,” Drexel coach Bruiser Flint said. “We were awful.”

Wall did a little bit of everything, finding Cousins for open baskets early as the Wildcats raced to a quick 15-3 lead, then showing his breathtaking ability in the open court as Kentucky pulled away.

He scored the last six points of the half, all on layups, all with a relatively high degree of difficulty, including one in which he wrapped the ball behind his back from his left hand to his right hand at full speed before putting it in off the glass.

The ebullient guard pointed toward the stands behind the basket after the ball splashed through the net, and the party was on.

The Wildcats led 56-20 at the break. When Patterson opened the second half with a 3-pointer, the crowd started holding up signs like “UK2K” and counting the minutes until the program’s spot in the history books was secure.

“We just wanted to be the ones to finish it off,” forward Ramon Harris said. “There are a lot of guys and coaches that were a part of this. We just happened to be the ones celebrating.”

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