LOUISVILLE, Ky. – After defeating Hampton, Willie Cauley-Stein said he wasn’t Superman.Further proof may be needed.With 2:46 remaining in the first half of Kentucky’s 64-51 third-round victory over Cincinnati, Cauley-Stein took a pass from Tyler Ulis and took flight from the left side of the lane, throwing down one of the biggest and baddest dunks of the college basketball season, and certainly the still young NCAA Tournament.”I feel like I might have turned into Superman on that, but I’m just Clark Kent, you know what I’m saying?” Cauley-Stein said. “I just went into a little phone booth and turned into Superman real quick.”Unfortunately for Cincinnati (23-11), there was no kryptonite to be found.After trailing for 7:42 of the opening 17:14, UK never trailed again following the junior forward’s dunk that put UK up 25-24.After the game, many wondered, where does this dunk rank in the ever-growing collection of Cauley-Stein posters?”It might be worse than the dude from Florida,” Cauley-Stein said. “I mean, I don’t think they put the kid back in the game. It was nasty.””Probably top three,” Ulis said. “Not No. 1. The Florida dunk is No. 1. Definitely.”Whether it was his best dunk or not is a matter of preference, but it did share a number of similarities to that of his poster over Florida’s Devin Robinson.Aside from both posters occurring on the left side of the lane and with Cauley-Stein already having picked up a head of steam, they both came against 6-foot-8 freshmen. Perhaps the naivety of youth played a role in contesting the dunk.”I don’t get it,” Andrew Harrison said. “I don’t know why you would jump. Just swipe it. Run-through swipe, that’s what I would do.””We don’t know why people jump when he’s already in the air,” Trey Lyles said. “It’s pretty much over after that. So if you jump after that there’s something wrong with you.”Second, and of much more importance to the Cats, both dunks gave Kentucky the lead for good in what had otherwise been back-and-forth, tight games. Against Florida, it was the ensuing free throw after the dunk that gave Kentucky a 45-44 lead with 12:09 to play in the game. On Saturday, Cauley-Stein’s dunk pushed the Cats ahead 25-24. Both times the dunk fueled UK.”That’s why I think Coach harps on just dunking it all the time because it just gives everybody so much juice,” Cauley-Stein said. “It gets the crowd going, especially something like that. It was crazy.”It also helps push Kentucky defensively, something it does better than any other team in the country.”It got us all going, got us a little hyped, got Willie going a little bit,” Lyles said. “Defensively, like I said, we started to lock down at the end of the half.”Cauley-Stein’s three-point play was part of a 10-0 run for Kentucky to close out the half and turn a once five-point deficit into a seven-point halftime lead, giving the Cats momentum, and confidence to know their defense is capable of shutting the Bearcats out.”We said it in the huddle when there’s 2:44 left in the half, ‘We have to push it. We have to push it now,’ and we succeeded at it,” Cauley-Stein said “Anytime you can execute what you’re thinking is good.”Fresh off a 21-point, 11-rebound performance against Hampton, Karl-Anthony Towns had another strong game against Cincinnati, scoring eight points, grabbing seven rebounds and blocking three shots, but it wasn’t just Towns who played well against the Bearcats. It was a balanced, team effort, with no one player shining well over another.”Every game I’m not going to go for 21,” Towns said. “They’re not going to just let me go for 21, but that’s the beauty of this team. My brothers, everyone’s so talented that it doesn’t matter if you get eight. But if you get eight, he gets 10, he gets eight, he gets eight, he gets 10, it adds up to be a lot of points.”There was Lyles, who posted his second double-double of the year with 11 points and a career-high 11 rebounds. Ulis scored nine points, dished out five assists and didn’t commit a turnover. Not to be forgotten, Aaron Harrison scored a team-high 13 points, and his brother finished with five points, two assists, no turnovers and one of the biggest baskets in the game: a tough layup while getting fouled midway through the second half. Cauley-Stein scored nine points, blocked two shots and played suffocating defense.In all, Kentucky had five players score at least eight points, but nobody register more than 13. The Cats were outrebounded by seven, outscored in the paint by two and shot just 37 percent from the field, their lowest percentage since shooting 28.1 percent on Jan. 10 in a double-overtime victory at Texas A&M, but still won by 13.”I always like it when my team shoots 37, 36, 35 percent and wins in double digits,” UK head coach John Calipari said. “It shows them they don’t have to make shots to win.”The good news is there’s enough guys that, if two or three aren’t playing well, we can still survive. What they learned today is we don’t have to shoot the ball well, and we can still survive. You just want them going into every game saying, it doesn’t matter what happens. We can still win. And that’s the mentality I want them in.”It also doesn’t hurt to have a guy who can dunk a player out of a game.”I didn’t even see it,” Andrew Harrison said. “I didn’t get to see it, I was talking to somebody on the side of me. I just saw everybody standing up and I saw a dude went down on the ground. ‘Not this again.’ “