LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Kentucky had waited all season long for the NCAA Tournament. Thursday morning, the Wildcats woke up and it was here.It was like Christmas morning, only the Cats had to wait all day to run down the stairs and open their presents for a scheduled 9:40 p.m. start.”It was really difficult just to be so excited to play and then you have to wait all day and pretty much all night too,” Aaron Harrison said.The wait was almost over as the Cats stood in the tunnel outside their KFC Yum! Center locker room. They watched the final seconds of a matchup between Cincinnati and Purdue tick down, only for the Bearcats’ Troy Caupain to hit a game-tying layup as time expired to send the game to overtime.The presents would have to wait even longer.”To be honest, we’re just all in the locker room stretching, talking, trying to keep each other loose,” said Andrew Harrison, who drew playful jabs from teammates after predicting the extra session.Finally, Cincinnati would pull out the win and Kentucky’s second-round matchup with Hampton could begin. When it did at 10:18 p.m., all the anticipation turned into, well, coal.”We’ve been excited to play all day and I think it just got that moment and we didn’t have a lot of energy,” Aaron Harrison said. “It’s just tough to wait all day to play.”In spite of the relative dud of a start, the top-seeded Wildcats (35-0) took down Hampton, 79-56, to set up a showdown with those eighth-seeded Bearcats at approximately 2:40 p.m. on Saturday. They still weren’t content with the way they played.”We played really sluggish and just didn’t have enough energy, I think,” said Aaron Harrison, who missed all five of his field goals and scored three points in an uncharacteristically pedestrian NCAA Tournament performance. “We’re of course a young team. We might have not come into the game as focused as we should have.”The Cats started the game 8 of 23 from the field and led by single digits until Karl-Anthony Towns – who was the standout for UK with a career-high 21 points to go with 11 rebounds and three blocks – scored with 5:36 before halftime. The juice that the Cats have come to be known for in blitzing through this college basketball season, outside a crippling 14-0 run to build a 19-point halftime lead, was just never there even though UK led by as many as 35.The lack of focus, to John Calipari, did not come as a shock.”You sit in the locker room that long, you kind of know that can happen,” Calipari said.Readily explainable as it may have been, it’s unacceptable in his eyes. From this point forward, the games only get tougher. Future opponents, starting with Cincinnati, will be eager to pounce if the Cats suffer a similar lapse.”One of the things I talked to them after, you’re not going to do this on their terms. You can’t start games like this,” Calipari said. “You can’t do things that we talk about every day and you choose to do something else. You can’t do things on your terms in this tournament because what happens is you’ll have a 12-point lead, and then you’ll turn around, and it will be a two-point game.”Hampton was never able to make it a game in that way, as UK won its fifth game in a row by double digits and 28th overall. In spite of that, there was a distinct feeling that the Cats had played a subpar game from most anyone who watched. That’s a high standard to live up to, but the Cats don’t mind it.”Not only is it everybody else around, we should expect that out of ourselves too,” Devin Booker said. “Coach expects that out of us. He came in here and told us we didn’t play our best game and if we keep playing like that it’s going to be trouble. We’re just focusing on coming out first and being the aggressor.”Booker scored just two points on 1-of-6 shooting, continuing a six-game slump during which he’s scored in double figures once and shot 11 of 34 from the field. As ready as Booker might be to return to the sweet-shooting form he showed for much of the season, that kind of thing isn’t what Coach Cal is thinking about when he says the Cats played short of their potential.Shots will miss and shots will fall, but UK cannot get away from what makes it special.”You can’t do stuff on your terms,” Calipari said. “You’ve got to follow the script. Here’s how we play. This is what we do. Here’s the energy we play with. And we’re able to play enough people that, OK, we start the game slow. I may sub earlier. I see it Saturday, I may sub one minute in. Let’s go, need more energy. I think these guys will be fine.”So does Aaron Harrison.”I expected a lot more out of us and I expected a lot more out of myself,” he said. “I should have played a lot better as well. But I think everyone will see a different team on Saturday, definitely.”