Wednesday, February 2 Vols rocked on way to top By Pat Forde Special to ESPN.com

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- The Tennessee Volunteers want to be taken seriously. As in national-title-contender serious.

But every time they get close to reaching the Rocky Top of the heap, they turn in a you-can't-be-serious performance like Tuesday night's at Kentucky.

Top Games

Conference USA Cincinnati at UAB (Saturday) Nobody in this league looks capable of stopping the Bearcats' freight train -- but neither has anyone been able to win on the Blazers' home court this season. UAB is 9-0 in Bartow Arena but only 11-7 overall. The gym is nice, but not much of a noise pit (average attendance this year: 4,680). Don't look for Cincy to be spooked. SEC Kentucky at Florida (Tuesday) After a weekend of unappetizing matchups, two of the SEC's five ranked teams mix it up in Gainesville. The Gators won there last year and need a big victory to regain some credibility after frazzled losses to Tennessee and DePaul. A Kentucky win here and the Wildcats have a leg up on another SEC title.

Before getting into the gory details of the Vols' 81-68 loss to the onrushing Wildcats, flash back to last year. Tennessee beat Kentucky twice during the regular season to win its first-ever Southeastern Conference Eastern Division title. The Volunteers were so pleased with themselves that they immediately bowed out of the SEC tourney against an NIT-bound Mississippi State team, then were thoroughly humiliated by Southwest Missouri State in the NCAA Tournament second round, 81-51.

OK, now flash forward to Rupp Arena and the biggest game in the SEC this season to date. Tennessee waltzed in at 18-2 and a league-best 6-1 in conference games. Just last week it obliterated Auburn 105-76, such a dominating performance that it actually looked like the Vols could stand toe-to-toe with the likes of Cincinnati, Stanford, Duke, Syracuse and the Big Ten troika of Michigan State, Ohio State and Indiana.

This is a team steeped in talent -- size, quickness, skills, depth, shooters, the whole deal. Tennessee can match up physically with anyone this side of the Bearcats.

So into Rupp came the Vols, all dressed up as the nation's No. 6 team according to Associated Press and No. 9 by ESPN/USA Today, only to spill soup on their tie. The effort was there, but the basketball IQ was lacking. This was a cubic zirconia performance in a high-rent jewelry store.

Tennessee simply showed no poise or patience on offense, hurriedly jacking up 3-pointers left and right. Ten of its first 15 field-goal attempts were 3s, and nearly half their field-goal attempts for the game came from outside the arc (27 of 59).

Even Vincent Yarbrough, the wonderfully talented sophomore swingman who spurned Kentucky for the Vols, turned into a perimeter percher. Ten of his 13 attempts were 3s (he did hit five, leading the Vols with 17 points).

Yarbrough expounded this week about how wise he was to choose the Vols over Big Blue: "You see where we are and where they are and I can't help but feel good about that."

Hmmmm. Another Volunteer announcing their arrival prematurely. Thinking all the way back to last year, didn't Kentucky advance to a "disappointing" final eight while the Vols were being jackhammered by Southwest Missouri State?

Championship teams know that November, December and January are little more than jockeying for position.

Tuesday the calendar hit February.

And UK hit the Vols in the mouth. And as it turned out, the baby of the bunch threw the punch.

To dip into the turgid waters of Vitalespeak, the list of the dandiest diapers of them all in college basketball begins with Arizona's Jason Gardner, the Duke tandem of Carlos Boozer and Jason Williams, Cincinnati's DerMarr Johnson and North Carolina's Joseph Forte.

But today slap a platinum Pampers on Kentucky guard Keith Bogans, who is rapidly progressing from crawling to walking to running. He is arriving with a headlong rush -- and bringing an increasingly impressive Wildcats team with him.

	Keith Bogans put Kentucky on his back against Tennessee.

Bogans was one turbo-charged toddler Tuesday night. He played like a guy tired of hearing about all the other high-impact freshmen out there. He played like a guy chagrined that his nine-point season scoring average knocked him off of center stage.

Bogans hung a career-high 25 points on the Volunteers, the most points by a UK player this year and the most by a UK freshman since Rodrick Rhodes (now there's a blast from the past) in 1992.

"We knew Bogans was a good player," said Tennessee forward Isiah Victor. "We just didn't know he was going to kill us like he did."

The killing commenced quickly. Bogans opened UK's scoring with a 3-pointer and simply never stopped, throwing in five rebounds, two assists and two steals and showing a Jordanesque hunger to take ownership of this showdown.

On a team that considers 10 individual field-goal attempts to be a Pete Maravich night, Bogans launched 17. At one point he had jacked 12 of UK's first 22 shots and scored 14 of UK's first 20 points.

Which fits Bogans' mentality. He wants to take the big shots, the little shots and the in-between shots. He wants to bring the ball up the floor, play post defense, go one-on-one from anywhere.

"He doesn't back down from any shots," point guard Saul Smith said.

Or any challenges. If Tubby Smith would let him, Bogans would probably ask to jump center.

"I wanted the ball bad," Bogans said. "I was feeling it. When you're in the zone, you need the ball."

Fact is, UK needed Bogans to need the ball.

Leading scorer and rebounder Jamaal Magloire reverted to the foolish fouls and offensive clunkiness of years past, going scoreless for the first 35 minutes of the game.

Second-leading scorer Tayshaun Prince took 17 minutes to score. He rose to the occasion splendidly in the second half, but Bogans had done the heavy lifting to that point.

This is a not a freshman awed by big-time basketball.

We can't yet say the same of Tennessee.

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