The dust has barely settled from Thursday night’s win and it’s already time to turn our attention to the North Carolina matchup, a game some are considering the biggest showdown of the season.

Since there’s no great way to transition from one game to the other on such a short turnaround and cover everything I need to get to, I thought I’d post some random notes to close the book on St. John’s and look ahead to North Carolina.

We’ll have plenty of Carolina coverage into the afternoon and evening hours after news conferences from UK and North Carolina. There should be plenty to talk about.

Asked postgame how he and his staff would prepare for North Carolina with little time to spare, John Calipari said he would watch tape of the UK-St. John’s game Thursday night before studying film of the UK-UNC from a year ago along with a couple of Carolina’s games from this year.

Calipari said he watched 12 to 15 minutes of the UNC-UNLV game, but he didn’t find too many weaknesses with the Tar Heels. Calipari said UNLV simply got hot from the perimeter.

“UNLV made 13 3s, which is why they won the game, and they really fought like heck and did a pretty good job,” Calipari said. “But they came back against a Wisconsin team that’s even more physical and tougher than the UNLV team and really did a pretty good job on them. So I think they bounced back and recovered from that. They are a good team. They are really good.”

Calipari said he had no idea how UK would play North Carolina yet.

“They pretty much play how they play,” Coach Cal said. “We pretty much play like we play. I doubt if either one of us are going to try to hold the ball. I mean, it should be an up-and-down game, I imagine. You let them get in too much of an up-and-down game, you’ll get killed. You’ve got to make it so that they are not getting just pass-ahead layups.”

Even if UK struggled offensively by Coach Cal's standards, the Cats blocked a school-record 18 shots against St. John's. (photo by Britney McIntosh, UK Athletics)

Obviously, Calipari wasn’t too happy with the offense in the win over St. John’s.

After committing just four turnovers the entire game against Portland, UK made five in the opening minutes against St. John’s and eight in the first half. Kentucky settled down and finished with 12 total turnovers, but it was also the worst shooting game of the year (40.6 percent) and the first time the Cats have dropped below 50 percent shooting on the season (49.6).

Speaking with ESPN at halftime, Coach Cal told a national audience he had the worst offensive team in the country. Postgame, he described the offense as “inept.”

“We are what we are,” Calipari said. “We are a good defensive team and we cannot sustain the energy we need because it’s so early in the season. We stopped playing a lot. And offensively, we just aren’t in sync yet, and we have got to get it there.

Senior Darius Miller, who scored nine points and dished out a game-high six assists, reminded reporters that this is a new team filled with young players that are still trying to play together.

“It’s kind of hard when you have this much talent on the team, especially with the young guys,” Miller said. “We haven’t played on a team with this much talent before, so it was kind of hard to get used to that, especially in this new system. This is new for a lot of players. A lot of players don’t play in systems like Coach Cal’s.”

For what it’s worth, UK is still one of the top scoring teams in the country and ranked No. 5 in Ken Pomeroy’s adjusted offensive efficiency ratings.

Count NBA superstar and Coach Cal friend LeBron James as a fan of this year’s team.

During the middle of the UK-St. John’s game, James praised the Cats on his Twitter account.

For as “inept” as the offense was against St. John’s, the Cats certainly rolled out their fair share of offensive highlights.

From Terrence Jones’ mammoth put-back slam to Miller’s one-hand flush, the UK-St. John’s game was one big SportsCenter highlight. Really, it was.

On Thursday night’s SportsCenter, three different UK players made the top 10. Anthony Davis was at No. 6, Jones was at No. 4 and Miller checked in at No. 2.

In case you forgot what Miller did, here’s the dunk again (credit to YouTube user Vtakt67):

Miller said it was probably the best dunk of his career at UK.

If there is one player in the country that comes close to Davis’ length and athleticism, it’s probably North Carolina’s John Henson.

Physically, Davis (6-foot-10, 220 pounds) and Henson (6-11, 220 pounds) are mirror images of each other, and statistically they’re pretty darn close, too (Davis – 13.0 ppg, 9.1 rpb, 4.9 bpg; Henson – 14.7 ppg, 10.9 rpg, 3.3 bpg).

We’ll find out Saturday morning in our scouting report with assistant coach John Robic if Davis will guard Henson (as opposed to Tyler Zeller), but I’d guess we see Davis on Henson for most of the game (with Jones on Zeller).

Davis is looking forward to the matchup.

“Henson is a great shot blocker,” Davis said. “He blocks shots just as well as me. He rebounds. I’m looking forward to it.”

Don’t look too deep into the absence of sophomore Jarrod Polson Thursday night. Polson did not play because of a lower back injury.

He’s listed as day to day.

As if this Kentucky-North Carolina matchup needed more hype, ESPN’s NBA Draft guru Chad Ford had a telling tweet about the talent that will be the Rupp Arena floor on Saturday.

And finally, here are a few stories from the national and local media:

• Calipari not thrilled with UK’s final tune-up (Jason King, ESPN)
• Kentucky freshmen are fluent in defense (Eric Crawford, Courier-Journal)
• Tar Heels have an outside shot at Kentucky (Mark Story, Lexington Herald-Leader)
• Father-son take birthday road trip from West Coast to watch Cats (Keith Taylor, Winchester Sun)