Kentucky vs. Hampton: Score and Twitter Reaction from March Madness 2015

The top-ranked Kentucky Wildcats passed another hurdle on Thursday night in their quest for perfection.

Although John Calipari's team needed a couple of minutes to find its footing, it eventually did and rolled to a 79-56 victory over Hampton in the second round of the 2015 NCAA tournament.

Freshman Karl-Anthony Towns was the standout performer for the Wildcats. He led the team with 21 points, which are a career high, per Kentucky Basketball.

Kyle Tucker of The Courier-Journal could tell early on that Towns was going to do something special:

Towns also grabbed 11 rebounds to finish with a double-double.

Defensively, Kentucky was stifling, holding Hampton to 17-of-59 shooting from the field. The Pirates also missed 12 of their 16 three-point attempts.

The first half illustrated why Kentucky is such a heavy favorite to win the national championship.

Hampton was hanging around for the first eight or so minutes of the game. The Pirates were within three points of Kentucky with just under 12 minutes left in the half.

Then, the Wildcats went on an 18-3 run to jump ahead by 18 points. That was the beginning of the end for Hampton.

The Wildcats were far from their best through the first 20 minutes, though. As a team, they shot 1-of-6 from behind the arc. The trio of Andrew Harrison, Aaron Harrison and Willie Cauley-Stein also combined to make one field goal.

Cauley-Stein was also picked up two fouls, which limited his impact on the floor.

ESPN's Skip Bayless wondered whether UK is buying into its hype just a bit too much:

Sporting News' Jesse Spector put a more positive spin on things, arguing that it isn't easy to gain a 19-point edge against any team in the NCAA tournament:

During his halftime interview, Calipari appeared dissatisfied with what he'd seen so far. He intimated that he wouldn't be afraid to shake things up personnel-wise, making a rather unique parallel in the process, per Andrew Perloff of The Dan Patrick Show:

His locker-room talk to his players worked as Kentucky started the second half on a 13-2 run. The Wildcats went for the jugular and never gave the Pirates an opportunity to regain their bearings.

Hampton also couldn't contend with the depth of Kentucky's rotation. The Wildcats' bench combined to score 24 points, compared to 10 points for the Pirates.

Zach Harper of CBS Sports found one of the few silver linings for the losing team:

Hayley Minogue of WYMT-TV in Kentucky added that Hampton probably gave the Wildcats a better game than the Kansas Jayhawks did back on Nov. 18:

There's no doubt that Kentucky will have to be better in the third round if it is to beat the Cincinnati Bearcats in the third round.

Cincinnati needed a little bit of luck to get past the Purdue Boilermakers, but the Bearcats rank 16th in adjusted defense and 341st in adjusted tempo, according to KenPom.com.

That combination might prove troublesome for the Wildcats if they're not hitting on all cylinders.

With that said, nothing from Thursday night's win led you to believe Kentucky still isn't the betting choice to win it all.