Last year’s trip to Columbia, S.C., spelled devastation. This year’s visit was all about vindication.Traveling to the same place that ended Kentucky’s hopes of an undefeated season, the UK men’s basketball team may have restored some hopes with its first Southeastern Conference road win of the year, a 67-58 the-score-was-closer-than-the-game-really-was victory over South Carolina on Saturday.The Cats can now breathe a considerable sigh of relief as they squashed some pretty significant worries about their ability to tough out a win on the road.”It’s a good win for us,” head coach John Calipari said. “We played pretty well.”Perhaps seldom-used guard Jon Hood said it best Friday before the Cats left for Columbia when he said, “You’ve got to go in, get up early and get out.” That’s exactly what Kentucky did in a hostile environment.Playing with the type of swagger that fans have been clamoring for on the road, UK outmuscled, outhustled and outplayed the Gamecocks from start to finish. “We really needed to show we could win on the road to prove to ourselves that we can do this,” said freshman forward Terrence Jones, who finished with 14 points and seven rebounds.Jones, returning to the starting lineup for the first time in four games, set the tone early with three ferocious dunks in the first nine minutes of the first half. His crossover, one-hand flush in the face of shot blocker Sam Muldrow put UK up 20-12 midway through the first half.The Cats hardly looked back.”I thought our execution in the first half to start the game to get up 10 was as good as it’s been with this team,” Calipari said.The lead ballooned to as much as 18 in the second half and Kentucky threatened to blow the Gamecocks out of the gym in arguably South Carolina’s biggest regular-season game of the year. With the exception of a late flurry from the Gamecocks, it was as impressive of a win as UK has notched all year long considering the circumstances.A loss would have put the Cats a game under .500 in the Southeastern Conference at 2-3, two games behind South Carolina and Florida, which improved to 4-1 in the league Saturday. Instead, UK (15-4, 3-2 SEC) is right back in the thick of the race, sitting one game behind the Gators for the Eastern Division lead. The veteran play of Darius Miller had as much to do with the win as anything. Playing some of the best basketball of his Kentucky career, Miller scored a season-high 18 points, grabbed five rebounds and blocked two shots.”He was aggressive,” Calipari said. “That’s all I’m asking him to do. You don’t have to make every shot. He had four turnovers and about three balls jerked out of his hands. At the end of the day I want everything. I want him to grab all those balls (and) be tough with it so you don’t turn it over and then play aggressive. The reason is I think he’s that good. Now today he looked like one of the best players in our league. That’s what I think he is.”Performances like Saturday’s underscore what makes Calipari so frustrated with him. There have been times this season when Miller has mentally floated in and out of the game, and then there are games like Saturday’s where he shows the potential to dominate games.It seems – and Miller has displayed stretches like this before – that Miller is starting to gain more consistency. Over the last four games he’s averaging 13.8 points and 4.8 rebounds.The Cats will need that type of experienced play throughout the SEC season.”When Darius plays like he did tonight, he’s the best player in our conference at our position,” Jones said. “It’s hard to guard him and it’s hard to guard us because it gives us another person that can shoot the ball and drive to kick.”Of course, much of the credit should also be pointed at another veteran leader, junior guard DeAndre Liggins.He scored just one point in 36 minutes of play, but Liggins once again stepped up to a defensive challenge and shut down the opposing team’s top offensive threat. South Carolina freshman guard Bruce Ellington, who is already being touted as the next Devan Downey, was limited to eight points on 3-of-11 shooting.”He did a great job and he always does a great job of locking down the other team’s best player,” Miller said. “We can always depend on him, especially on the defensive end to lock somebody down. We feed off that.”The South Carolina win isn’t enough to erase the nightmares from the Alabama and Georgia road losses, but it did show there is more toughness to this team than what it displayed in Tuscaloosa, Ala.”We’re trying to figure out the team,” Calipari said. “I still haven’t figured them out yet.”