LEXINGTON, KY -- Billy Gillispie's second game at Kentucky turned out to be the first shocker of the college basketball season.

Gardner-Webb out of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, has toppled
the 20th-ranked Wildcats 84-68 in the 2K Sports College Hoops
Classic.

The Wildcats hadn't lost a regular-season game to a mid-major
since falling to Western Kentucky in the 2001 season opener. They
lost to Alabama-Birmingham in 2004 in the first round of the NCAA
tournament.

The 2K tournament had been set up to send four top programs --
Memphis, Connecticut, Oklahoma and Kentucky -- to New York next
week to play in the semifinals.

But Gardner-Webb, which finished 9-and-21 last season and tied
for seventh in the Atlantic Sun Conference, will play the winner of
Thursday night's game between Buffalo and Connecticut at Madison
Square Garden.