CHICAGO — His team mired in a cold streak from outside, John Calipari asked a rhetorical question about what UK would do to its opponents if the Wildcats hit their 3s.Anyone who didn’t know the answer found out Saturday.The Cats came out firing against UCLA, building a 16-0 lead and hitting two 3s before the second platoon even checked in. Once it did, Devin Booker hit two more 3s in a personal eight-point barrage that gave UK an insurmountable 24-0 lead.From there, UK had to find a new opponent.”We have to keep playing against (ourselves),” Booker said. “Coach always stresses to us that we’re not playing against the other team, we’re against ourselves.”Coach Cal, meanwhile, wasn’t even bothering to look at the score as the No. 1 Cats raced to a 41-7 halftime advantage. He did sneak a peek or too after halftime though, which told him everything he needed to know about UK’s 83-44 win over the Bruins (8-4).”I didn’t look at the score,” Calipari said. “Like in the first half, I did not know what the score was. I knew it was pretty good, but I did not look — to be honest, I couldn’t find it in the arena.”UK fans, who accounted for the majority of the 19,726 fans in Chicago’s United Center on Saturday afternoon, reveled in their team’s 12th straight double-digit win to start the season, a school record. They cheered as the Cats smothered UCLA to the tune of 26.8-percent shooting and 0.618 points per possession. They applauded as UK hit 12 of 26 from 3-point range and exactly 50 percent from the field overall.UCLA’s Steve Alford, meanwhile, could do little but marvel at the group his friend Coach Cal has assembled.”I don’t know in my 20 years of coaching at the Division I level that I’ve coached against a better team than what this team looks like,” Alford said. “They have everything.”Though he wasn’t as quick to pump the brakes on the hype machine as he was after the last time UK demolished a fellow blue-blood program in a made-for-TV neutral-site showdown against Kansas last month, Coach Cal didn’t join the chorus praising UK as a potential all-time team. Painting a masterpiece, after all, happens one brushstroke at a time.”I’m day to day,” Calipari said. “I’m in a grind and I’m staying in the moment. The one thing I’m doing is really enjoying these guys.”It isn’t their dominance on the court that Calipari is enjoying so much either, at least not primarily. To him, it’s all about the selflessness that’s allowing it all to happen.”We can all talk about defense and blocking shots and playing hard, but you’ve got 10 guys, 11 guys sharing minutes,” Calipari said.At point guard, you have Andrew Harrison and Tyler Ulis, who combined for 15 points, 14 assists and 10 rebounds. Aaron Harrison and Booker are splitting minutes at shooting guard, but that didn’t stop them from accounting for 34 total points on eight made 3s. Among UK’s frontcourt players, no one among Willie Cauley-Stein, Karl-Anthony Towns, Dakari Johnson or Trey Lyles had eye-popping numbers, but as a group they dominated.”I think the story is how good are these kids, and how strong are these families and how trusting they are,” Calipari said. “Willie said it after the Kansas game. He came in and said, we trust the coaches, and we trust each other. That’s what this is. It’s a group of kids that trust.”Relying on that trust, the Cats are accepting their coach’s challenge to dream. That’s why they never relented even as their lead ballooned to as large as 46 points.”As we go forward, we’ve got one thing, how do we continue, let’s make this world class,” Calipari said. “How do we become that world-class team, and it’s real simple. One, you have few errors and you have no unforced errors. That’s what a world-class team is about. The second thing a world-class team is about, they absolutely enjoy, even the tough times. They enjoy playing.”As much as they enjoy playing, the Cats couldn’t help but look forward to a four-day break for the holidays that would follow the UCLA game. UCLA, as it turns out, was the only thing standing between the Cats and home.”Everyone is excited,” Booker said. “We’re all excited to go home, and we knew we had to go through this first game and it wasn’t going to be easy, but we just brought energy to the floor, and that’s what put it over the top.”But after that break, it’s back to business for Kentucky. Even with a trip to Louisville looming on Saturday, that means the Cats will be playing themselves more than the archrival Cardinals.”You know, we’re trying to build something here to say, you’re going out, playing against yourself, and you hear these kids talking about it,” Calipari said. “World-class teams play against themselves; they don’t play against the opponent.”