NASHVILLE, Tenn. — This one had all the writings of a devastating upset.John Wall and Eric Bledsoe were a miserable 5-of-19 from the field. DeMarcus Cousins, the only real legitimate offensive threat Saturday, was plastered to the bench with four fouls with nearly 10 minutes to play. UK revisited its early season free-throw woes, going just 17-of-30 from the charity stripe. As for an offensive flow? Forget about it. It was non-existent.And that wasn’t even the worst part, according to head coach John Calipari. After Wall swished a free throw with 2.5 seconds left and UK leading by two, Calipari made what he called “one of the dumbest timeouts” he’s ever called in his career. “As I left the timeout, I said, ‘Guys, this is the stupidest timeout I’ve ever called,’ ” Calipari said. ” ‘Please make me look good. Somebody do something.’ “The timeout set up Ogilvy for a potential game-tying, length-of-the-court pass with 2.5 seconds left in the game. If there was ever going to be a Christian Laettner repeat (Ogilvy even resembles the Dukie in an eerie kind of way), this was it.But not on this night. Not this year. Not with this team. No. 2 UK won again, 58-56, sprinting out of a nasty, hostile Memorial Gymnasium with yet another heart-stopping win, this one over No. 19/17 Vanderbilt. “We just shot the ball 35 percent on the road, 18 percent from behind the (3-point) line, shot 56 percent from the free-throw line and had 14 turnovers – and won,” Calipari said. “I love it. That is exactly the win I love to have.”The 14,316 fans in Memorial Gymnasium would tell you UK didn’t deserve this one. They’d point to an even colder Vanderbilt team that shot 32.1 percent from the floor and hit just 2-of-20 from behind the arc. But good teams – check that, championship-caliber teams – no matter how ugly, no matter how close it is, find ways to win games like these. These are the type of wins that matter in the NCAA Tournament, when everything is on the line and nothing matters but the win.Who cares about style points when you’re 26-1?”You’ve got to be a grinder,” Calipari said. “You’ve got to be a team that grinds it.”As Calipari mentioned after the game, everybody, including himself, wants UK to score 100 points and win by 40. But when March rolls around and the different styles of the nation converge on the tournament, all that will matter is who will be the last one dancing.That’s what has to make the UK faithful so confident after Saturday’s low-scoring street fight. If the Cats can win in that type of nasty environment with nothing going their way, what can possibly hold them back?For the second game in a row, when the Cats needed stops, they got them. UK held Vanderbilt to just four field goals in the final 10 minutes.”If you want us to play you in the 50s, we’ll play you in the 50s and try to beat you,” Calipari said. “If you want to play a zone, we’ll try to beat you that way. We don’t force our will on the other team. We want to play different ways.”When you get into that NCAA Tournament, you don’t know if you’re playing a team that’s going to play Princeton, play fast, play slow – you’ve got to beat them,” Calipari said. “You’ve got to beat them anyway. This was one of those ones. I love this.”Sure, the collective blood pressure of the Bluegrass State is surely through the roof, but there’s a reason Kentucky pulls out a seven-point, come-from-behind win at Mississippi State.There’s a reason it pulled out the team’s first win at Nashville in five years in the city’s biggest game in years. What’s that old saying about fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me? Well, this is sort of like that. The first time Kentucky won to a buzzer beater, it was easy to think about Kentucky’s flaws. But when the Cats do it again and again and again – and twice in two games – it shows a pattern that you can’t ignore:These guys are clutch.Who would have thought we’d ever say that about a bunch of freshman. Wall fits the bill better than anyone. By all accounts, Wall did not play well Saturday night. The freshman point guard hit just 3-of-11 shots from the field, 6-of-10 from the free-throw line and dished out just one assist.Yet when the game was on the line, the game’s most dynamic playmaker made the plays that mattered most. Tied at 54-54 with less than a minute to go, Wall drove right, lost the handle and somehow banked it in among the trees. He followed with a critical rebound, two key free throws and a one-hand block on Vanderbilt’s best 3-point shooter. With mere seconds left on the clock and down by three, Jenkins tried to shake Wall in open space to launch the potential game-winning shot. Wall never budged, stuffing Vandy’s first-place conference bid.”John has bad nights, I have bad nights, Patrick (Patterson) has bad nights,” Cousins said. “Somebody steps up. Maybe he doesn’t score 20-plus points. He’s still going to make key plays down the stretch.”If Kentucky makes a run for the Final Four in Indianapolis, there will inevitably be more heart-pounding nights like Saturday’s. But with the game on the line and the stakes at their highest, is there a team in the country anyone can feel more confident about?