LOUISVILLE – Now we can start talking North Carolina. The real North Carolina.Kentucky dispatched UNC’s brethren Monday night in Freedom Hall rather handily. UK defeated UNC Asheville 94-57 in its annual game in Louisville, dusting the winless Bulldogs from the opening tip.Here’s about all you need to know statistically from the game: DeMarcus Cousins, when out of foul trouble, continued to dominate, posting the third double-double of his young career with 24 points and 10 rebounds. John Wall was John Wall, dishing out a career-high 14 assists on countless alley-oop passes. Don’t worry, he got his own, scoring 12 points, including a blow-by, one-hand slam to cap the evening in the waning minutes of the game.And oh, the important stat: UK improved to 7-0 on the season, its best start since the 2004 season.”We needed a game like this,” head coach John Calipari said. “Folks, we’ve been in six wars and now we played this game, which hopefully built a little bit of confidence.”OK, so enough with that. The stage is set for the game everyone had circled since Calipari signed with the University of Kentucky on March 31. With a decent seven-game stretch of non-conference opponents out of the way, it’s time for the showdown with the defending national champion Tar Heels. Don’t kid yourself if you watched the game Monday night. I know your attention was on the Tar Heels. During the course of live blogging the game, I answered more questions on UNC than I did on UNC Asheville. In fact, I received a grand total of zero questions on the Bulldogs.

It’s OK. We all knew this upcoming three-game stretch vs. perennial powerhouses UNC, Connecticut and Indiana would be a true early measuring stick of where this team is, how far it has come and how much farther it has to go.So, coach, how confident do you feel after a Cancun Challenge championship and now a blowout on the floor of your archrival?”They’re listening, they’re trying,” Calipari said. “I liked what we did against the zone. I thought we moved the ball better, I thought we got it inside, I thought we looked over the top. We did some better things. But folks, we just have a long way to go. We’re just an OK team right now. Sometimes we’re not bad. We’re not good, but we’re not bad. And other times we’re just plain bad.”Calipari even kidded with his players after the game that their eight turnovers were too few. He believes that meant they weren’t being aggressive enough. Well, that’s Calipari being a coach. He’s being a perfectionist. But does he believe the Cats are where they need to be to compete with the likes of the Tar Heels and Huskies?”We’re not near those guys right now,” Calipari said. “I don’t think so, but you know what the great news is about playing? We’ll find out. We are going to find out. You’re talking about a well-coached team. They’ve got McDonald’s All-Americans – a bunch of them, not just one or two. They’re young at guard. We’re young everywhere.”Fair assessment. It’s hard to judge the improvement a team has made when it’s going against a team that’s lost by an average of 29.0 points per game. The measuring stick has to be taken with a grain of salt.But Calipari’s boys could have played against five ghosts and you would have found something to like Monday. Let’s start with Darius Miller. The sophomore guard opened the game with back-to-back treys. If you’re a UK fan you’re thinking great, it looks like he’s solved that shooting hitch. But moments later when Miller was left wide open again, he hesitated and passed off. Calipari jumped off his seat like it was on fire.”Shoot the ball, Darius,” Calipari screamed.Miller never hesitated the rest of the night.When Cousins was fouled going to the basket and drew a technical foul, Calipari had the option of putting any other player at the line. Why put a guy who was shooting 50 percent coming into this game, including two critical misses against Stanford, on the line? The coaching staff had worked with Cousins and had confidence he would make them.The freshman forward nailed all four (two personal foul shots and two technical shots).It’s small doses, but it shows they’re developing. It shows a will to learn. If they’re listening this much, just imagine how far they’ll be in March when the games against the North Carolinas and the UConns truly matter.”These kids respond when we coach them, but there’s so much to do,” Calipari said. “There are only so many fingers to put in a dike, and there’s water squirting out from everywhere. You work on this and then that goes haywire.”But when UK manages to patch the holes, we see small signs of brilliance. Calipari wouldn’t call it “unleashed” quite yet, but it looked darn close early in the second half.During a seven-minute span in the second half, UK went on a 29-5 run to bury the Bulldogs for good. Most of those baskets came on steals, lobs and dunks. Take it for what it’s worth, but it’s hard to imagine last year’s team doing that.”UNC Asheville is a pretty good team, but it’s kind of tough (to measure) because they’re not at the level we’ll be playing in the SEC,” Wall said. “Games like that, you’ve just got to come out and push it because they’re going to give you their best shot. … It’s just showing that we need to keep getting better and we need to get prepared for this weekend.”     Nobody is more prepared than Wall. In dishing out 14 dimes, Wall posted the most assists since UK great Travis Ford dished out a school record 15 in 1993. Calipari didn’t look surprised after the game, telling reporters that Wall is probably farther along than NBA first-round draft picks Derrick Rose and Tyreke Evans were when he had them at Memphis.”I get a sheet from the weight and strength coach and they talk about each player. On his it’s like ‘Animal,’ ” Calipari said. “He comes in here to get better every day. … There are certain kids that have that, that drive to want to stand out and be the best.”The team is quicker when’s out there. It’s easier for the players when he’s playing. And they’re a heck of a lot better when the ball is in his hands.”It’s very easy (when he’s playing),” Cousins said. “Whoever is guarding him, they can’t guard him.”Now that the Cats have gotten this North Carolina team out of the way, it’s time to see what they’ll do against the real North Carolina. Cousins believes this next game will be even bigger for Wall because of his North Carolina roots.”You might see Superman come out,” Cousins said. “I believe John has some bad blood with North Carolina.”We’ll see on Saturday and finally find out how far this team has come. “If we lose all three it is not bad as long as we learn where we are and what we need to work on,” Calipari said. “The only way is to play those kinds of people, and we are going to find out.”