Gary Parrish

Jodie Meeks launched himself into the National Player of the Year race Tuesday night.

He might've put the Kentucky Wildcats back in the Top 25, too.

That's what a 54-point effort in a 90-72 victory at Tennessee on national television can do for a player and a team, and if you missed it what you missed was arguably the most impressive individual performance in the history of Kentucky basketball. And that's not hyperbole. As rich as UK's tradition is, the school has never had a player hit 10 3-pointers or score 54 in a game. But Meeks did both before a soldout crowd at Thompson-Boling Arena to break (by a point) Dan Issel's single-game scoring mark set during the 1969-70 season.

So celebrate that, UK fans.

And get ready for what should be a nice run.

What's next is a winnable game at Georgia followed by a home game with Auburn, which means the Wildcats should be 15-4 overall and 4-0 in the SEC heading into a Jan. 24 tilt at Alabama. That's not bad for a team that opened 0-2 with a loss to VMI. So once again it appears Billy Gillispie has turned this thing around, and that's something everybody ought to remember -- including yours truly -- next November if the Wildcats stumble and take a bad early loss for the third straight season. If it happens, the wise move will be to laugh it off, because Gillispie has shown again that there's not a bad situation he can't fix, and if all else fails he can always just turn to Meeks, which seems like a reasonable gameplan given what took place Tuesday night in Knoxville.