The Journey recaps Kentucky's season-shifting win over St. John's

Catlanta never fails to live up to the hype with the Big Blue Mist making its way into the city for high-profile matchups and memorable Kentucky performances — the latest no exception, Mark Pope and the Wildcats taking down Rick Pitino and the St. John’s Red Storm at State Farm Arena.

The storylines spoke for themselves with student taking on the master in the coaching battle, Jaland Lowe’s tricky shoulder injury, Jayden Quaintance’s highly anticipated debut, Kam Williams’ breakthrough, Otega Oweh’s consistent production and slowing down the Johnnies’ frontcourt production. Now, we get to see a behind-the-scenes look at all of it and then some, thanks to the UK Sports Video team and their latest edition of The Journey.

It starts with Pope and Pitino getting off the bus (and the KSR crew waiting outside for all of it), followed immediately by the Wildcats teasing their head coach about his fancy new suit for the game.

“Ooh, real dapper then,” you can hear one player say in the locker room. “Pretty fresh.”

“This is business. We’re not holding back on any part of this,” Pope responded. “We’re gonna go.”

You see the warmups with Quaintance getting his feet wet, followed by all of the game’s highest moments with Kentucky stealing all of the momentum late. You also see Jaland Lowe’s (re-)injury and miraculous second-half return, how he told the team he felt fine at the break and would try to tough it out in the second.

“It’s going to get really scary once I get back on the court,” JQ said in the pre-recorded video from August in the new edition of The Journey. “People don’t know because I’ve been hurt and the team hasn’t seen me in real life yet, but it’s going to get really scary. I’m not gonna lie.”

Then came the dominant debut, all of it living up to the hype. That led to the (very) wet locker room celebration and Pope calling his shot with this group.

“Welcome to who you are,” he told the team. “How frustrated were you offensively in the first half? It never affected us defensively. You’re just tough and physical and at the rim, all the stuff we believe in. Every single guy who came in, he made a massive difference. It’s a different guy every single game… We’re rolling out of here with a really, really important win, that’s really great for us.

“What’s more important than the win is the identity that hopefully you’re grabbing onto. It’s who we are, yes?”

Take a look at yet another masterpiece from the UK Sports Video crew:

More of that, please.