MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- You could see the moment growing for De'Aaron Fox on Friday night before he scored 39 points in Kentucky's 86-75 win over UCLA in the Sweet 16, a victory that guaranteed a powerhouse clash with North Carolina on Sunday in the Elite Eight.

The Kentucky fans who dyed Beale Street blue and drained its establishments on Friday after trekking six hours from Lexington spilled into the FedEx Forum in the final minutes of the top-seeded Tar Heels' dismantling of Butler in the night's first South Region game.

After that one ended, Kentucky's cheerleaders flipped onto the floor. And UCLA's cheerleaders posed. Minutes later, Lonzo Ball strutted behind his hustling teammates as the Kentucky Wildcats jogged on the opposite end of the floor just before tipoff.

By then, Magic Johnson had found his seat near midcourt, where the Los Angeles Lakers legend and new president of basketball operations sat with Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka and scouted a pair of rosters with six combined projected first-round picks.

"I saw [Johnson] during warm-ups, but I mean, it didn't change it," said Fox, who also had four assists to one turnover. "We've had celebrities at games and stuff, so I mean, playing on this stage, there's going to be a lot of people there, people we probably don't even know that were there. We're coming out to play basketball, and that's all we're worried about. We're not worried about who's in the crowd, and we're trying to put on a show, but we're trying to win a game at the same time."

On Friday night, Fox, who glanced at Johnson in the first half, left the court as the biggest star on the oversize stage so many presumed would belong to Ball. Fox had enjoyed comparisons to John Wall since the day he signed with Kentucky. And who could deny the validity of such claims after watching him compete Friday?

Johnson attended -- and skipped the unveiling ceremony for Shaquille O'Neal's statue in Los Angeles -- to dissect the game of Ball, the West Coast product and projected top-three pick who could save the franchise from its ongoing misery in this summer's NBA draft.

But Fox starred instead and complicated conversations about the best point guard in college basketball.

If a point guard must be the most important leader on the floor, then those attributes were more pronounced in Fox's efforts than Ball's.

Ball produced 10 points and eight assists. But he also finished with four turnovers and missed five of his six 3-point attempts. Even with Kentucky extending its lead late, Ball maintained his serene demeanor. And minutes after his team's loss, he turned into a magician. Poof. He was leaving for the NBA, he said.

Throughout Friday's game, however, Fox never stopped talking, pushing and leading. His penetration-midrange combo baffled UCLA all night. The Bruins chased the speedy Kentucky star like a cat trying to pounce on a sneaky mouse in a dark room.

Before halftime, Fox stared as his teammates were coming off the floor and yelled, "Let's do this, baby!"

When Malik Monk (21 points) missed an open 3-pointer in the second half -- he had entered Friday's game in a 6-for-21 NCAA tournament slump -- Fox looked at him and screamed, "'Lik! You good! You good!"

"He's been a leader since he's been playing basketball, because I [saw] him on the [AAU] circuit before," Monk said of Fox. "I mean, nothing changed. But he's [gotten] way more physical and [smarter]."

Kentucky had always followed Fox, the team's starting point guard all season.

On Friday, however, the Wildcats stepped back and just let him work, because they knew they would win that way.

"Today, all I did at halftime is say, 'Guys, are you watching this game?' " Wildcats coach John Calipari said. "They said, 'Yeah.' 'OK, good, then you know we're playing through De'Aaron Fox. The rest of you take a back seat, play off of him, but everything we're doing good is through him the whole half.' And they were ecstatic. 'Good. Let's do it.' "

And now, Fox will enter Sunday's game as the standout who could lead second-seeded Kentucky to its third Final Four appearance in four seasons.

Last summer, he hit Kentucky's campus as a scrawny, speedy guard who had not yet learned to endure the aggression of the collegiate level. He struggled to finish in traffic. You could throw him off his rhythm with a little bump or shove.

But the gritty, tough freshman who weakened UCLA's defense with a flurry of drives and shots that made predicting Kentucky's offensive maneuvers impossible in the second half has clearly grown into a more tenacious ball handler.

Where would Fox go? What would he do next? Why isn't anything working?

The Bruins never seemed to know.

"It's tough to stop a guy who has as good of a midrange game as he does," UCLA's Bryce Alford said after the game. "That's a lost art in college basketball, and it's very hard to stop. The way he used pick-and-rolls, and he could get to the spot that he went to just about every time, and he didn't miss a whole lot of shots tonight, so you've got to give credit to him. If we had to do it all over again, I don't know if we'd change our game plan. He was just phenomenal tonight."

That's something for Johnson and the other NBA leaders to consider after Friday night.