Malik Monk's Record-Setting Heroics Vault Kentucky over UNC in Instant Classic

Malik Monk put to good use one of the most important rules when in Las Vegas: Never walk away from the table when you're on a heater.

Monk set a career high in scoring by halftime of No. 6 Kentucky's 103-100 win over No. 7 North Carolina in Las Vegas on Saturday. He nailed a pair of clutch threes late en route to a mind-blowing 47 points on 28 shots—only a couple of which looked forced in the slightest.

Monk became the third person in the past two calendar years to score at least 47 points in a game, joining St. Bonaventure's Marcus Posley and Washington's Andrew Andrews, who oddly enough put up 47 on the same day this past March. Monk obliterated the old record for points scored in a game by a Kentucky freshman, which was 35 by Jamal Murray and Terrence Jones, per Kyle Tucker and Connor Riley of SEC Country.

Let that simmer for a second. More than a few outstanding freshmen have come through Lexington in the past eight years. According to Scout, John Calipari has signed 29 5-star guys since 2009. And with 11 minutes remaining in this one, Monk had already scored more points in a game than any of them did.

NBC Sports' Rob Dauster was impressed:

This isn't the first time Monk has blown us away on a huge stage, and it won't be the last. In the Champions Classic win over Michigan State, he shot 7-of-11 from three-point range for a game-high 23 points. In the marquee showdown with UCLA earlier this month, Monk scored a game-high 24 points with five steals in a losing effort.

You have to add those outings together, though, to get his total against the Tar Heels.

"We usually run a play for me on the first play of the game, and if I make it, I'm gonna be on," Monk told John Schriffen of CBS after the win.

This wasn't some blowout where he was padding his stats, either. The Wildcats needed every one of his buckets to withstand a career-high 34 points from UNC's Justin Jackson. Monk buried two of his eight three-pointers on back-to-back possessions in the final 80 seconds, tying the game after the Tar Heels had clawed back to take the lead, then putting the Wildcats back ahead to stay.

ESPN's Jeff Goodman shared this anecdote:

"He pulls up as well as anybody," broadcaster Bill Raftery said midway through the first half. "Jerry West-like, getting those puppies organized and drilling it."

Comparing him to The Logo might be a bit much, but one guy I couldn't stop thinking about during Saturday's instant classic was Buddy Hield.

Last January, Kansas and Oklahoma squared off in a No. 1 vs. No. 2 battle that had everyone buzzing for days before and after. It went three overtimes, with Hield scoring a career-high 46 points and vaulting to the head of the class in the Player of the Year debate, despite a loss.

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Well, in 15 fewer minutes, Monk literally one-upped Hield's 46 and did so in a win. It probably didn't quite move Monk all the way to No. 1 in the Wooden Award conversation—guys like Kansas' Frank Mason III, Duke's Luke Kennard and UCLA's Lonzo Ball are still pretty good—but doing what Monk did against a team like North Carolina is a fine way to get into the discussion.

It wasn't just the best individual performance of the season, though. This was also the best game of the year, and there's no close runner-up.

It's hard to imagine another matching it—at least until March, when the win-or-go-home stakes of the NCAA tournament add a few dozen more ante chips to the pot of intrigue. Two of the three winningest programs in college basketball history left everything on the floor for a game that had all neutral fans of the sport not-so-secretly rooting for at least one overtime.

This had everything. Both teams shot better than 50 percent from the field and from three-point range. Transition points abounded in a back-and-forth slugfest. We even got a jacket toss from Roy Williams that dadgum near took Seventh Woods' head off.

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It also had a lot of promise for Kentucky's future. Monk will get all of the headlines, but De'Aaron Fox (24 points and 10 assists) was outstanding too. Isaiah Briscoe led with poise in the backcourt and racked up a game-high-tying seven rebounds. Bam Adebayo battled Carolina's bigs and foul trouble to finish with more points (13) than any other frontcourt player and also had seven rebounds. And Isaac Humphries and Wenyen Gabriel made much more of an impact than can be gleaned from the box score.

Even in defeat, the Tar Heels showed a ton of Final Four potential, too, as both teams brought their A-game.

When blue bloods get together this year, though, we expect no less.

Indiana vs. Kansas on opening night was an overtime delight. Four days later, Duke and Kansas was another gem with "national championship preview"-type implications. UCLA at Kentucky was more fun than a barrel of monkeys two weeks ago. Even North Carolina at Indiana was one heck of a game once the Tar Heels started mounting a comeback. And now this barn burner.

When big-name programs go toe-to-toe in epic clashes like these, it has already been an incredible year for college hoops, and we're barely five weeks into this one.

Over the final two months of last season, one word kept popping up: parity. There was no upper echelon of teams, as it felt like a Top Five ranking in the AP poll was a recipe for an impending disaster. This made for a fun, wildly unpredictable NCAA tournament, but the regular season was a mediocre blur.

This year, however, we are loaded with impeccable teams rooted in history. Kentucky, North Carolina, Duke, Kansas and UCLA are all rated as top-10 teams on KenPom.com, with Indiana not far behind at No. 16. The reigning national champs (Villanova) are No. 2 and playing better than last year. Even everybody's favorite Cinderella story (Gonzaga) is a threat to win the national championship.

If you have friends and family who always wait until March to get into college basketball, make sure to inform them over the holidays of what they're missing. The teams and games have been great, and Monk might be the most exciting, explosive player of the 2010s.

Stats are courtesy of KenPom.com and Sports-Reference.com. Recruiting information is courtesy of Scout.

Kerry Miller covers college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter @kerrancejames.