His team might be unbeaten and top-ranked, but that’s not stopping John Calipari from pushing every button he can think of to get the most out of the Wildcats.Even if it means changing long-standing coaching habits.”Normal case, we back up off practice this time of the year,” Calipari said. “Well, we went back Thursday to an hour of scrimmage and then they got after each other and I even scrimmaged them 15 minutes Friday, which I never do. “By its historically high standards, Kentucky had lost a bit of an edge in recent weeks, especially on defense. Opponents had scored a point per possession in the previous four games entering a rematch with South Carolina after managing to do so just twice in the season’s first 20 games.”We got a good group of players that need to go after – they don’t want to do drills,” Calipari said. “They look at me and say, ‘Stop the drills, let’s play.’ “Of course, the Cats had held on to their unbeaten record in the process, but Coach Cal was out to recapture that edge.”They argue, fight, foul, grab, and whoever loses has to run,” Calipari said. “If I forget to tell them to run, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, White’s got to run.’ And then I got to make them run and then we–so they don’t–if they beat somebody they’re making that other team run. They’re really competitive.”So competitive, in fact, that they can’t even agree which group has the upper hand.”Well, my squad hasn’t been losing as much,” Dakari Johnson said, laughing.”We usually win – I’m just joking,” Andrew Harrison said. “They’re fun matchups. You have to compete or you’re going to lose. No one wants to lose.”South Carolina saw that mentality up close and in person on Saturday in Rupp Arena.UK scored the first basket of the game 17 seconds in and never looked back. The Cats (25-0, 12-0 Southeastern Conference) were dominant on both ends of the floor in a 77-43 victory. UK held South Carolina (12-12, 3-9 SEC) to 23.6-percent shooting and 0.694 points per possession and shot 50 percent from the field.”We played well,” Calipari said. “Offensively we were really good, which created a pretty big gap. But I thought we defended, we played with great energy, we needed to play a game like this.”Perhaps most impressively, UK outrebounded South Carolina, 45-21, just three weeks removed from the Gamecocks winning the battle on the glass against the Cats, 40-28. Kentucky had just three offensive rebounds in that first matchup, but 15 this time to South Carolina’s nine defensive rebounds.Those scrimmages had something to do with that.”During practices we play physical against each other,” said Johnson, who had 10 points and 13 rebounds. “We started scrimmaging against each other again. So we’re really going at each other. I think it brought our competitiveness back out.”The competitiveness back, the Cats regained the form of some of their earlier dominant performances and tied the school record for the best start in school history set in 1953-54. Taking a break from his laser-like focus on improvement and best positioning his team for the postseason, Coach Cal talked briefly to his team about the achievement.”We’re all freshmen and sophomores and Willie (Cauley-Stein) and you played an unbelievable schedule,” Calipari said. “One of the best nonconference schedules in the country and you’re one of the best leagues in the country.”Cauley-Stein, who had a team-high 14 points to go with seven rebounds, fully understands the magnitude of what he and his teammates have done.”It’s just like special, for real,” he said. “We don’t really think about it as a whole, you just kind of take it day by day, work on stuff that you did wrong, and I mean the outcome is going to be the outcome, like you just prepare for it. But, like, I think it’s just special to me because I came from one of the worst teams on Kentucky’s history to now one of the top teams on Kentucky’s history. I mean, it’s just kind of cool to see the evolution of what was going on.” The evolution, however, isn’t over.”We can do something bigger,” Cauley-Stein said. “We have the chance to do something way bigger than just tying it.”