NASHVILLE — A few days before his top-ranked Kentucky basketball team was to travel to Vanderbilt, Wildcats coach John Calipari noted that his team might need a “challenge.”
Saturday night inside the Commodores’ often magical Memorial Gym, the Big Blue got one, coming from behind to win 69-63 for its 17th straight victory.
“They weren’t going away, but we weren’t going away, either,” Calipari said after the Wildcats climbed out of a 63-61 hole with 4:10 to play in the Southeastern Conference showdown. Kentucky had let a 36-23 halftime lead disappear.
“This kind of environment is why we do what we do.”
This kind of environment was a raucous crowd of 14,316 inside Memorial, plus a national television audience on ESPN, plus the network’s “GameDay” crew.