Michael Kidd-Gilchrist was handing out McDonald’s breakfast to Big Blue Madness campers. Three hours later, he was sitting in the UK Athletics office with those same 500 campers in tents ringing the building.

Kidd-Gilchrist is content with being in here instead of out there.

“It’s so cold outside right now,” Kidd-Gilchrist said of the 55-degree weather. “I swear, I wouldn’t be camping out.”

He did enjoy meeting those fans, though. They asked for his autograph. They talked about how much they were looking forward to this year, to UK’s eighth national championship. But man, they’re crazier than he expected. The same way John Calipari’s practices are harder than he expected. The same way living at college is harder than he expected.

“I’m homesick a little bit,” Kidd-Gilchrist said. “Just a little.”

He likes to call his mom back in New Jersey, to feel that connection to his family — the same connection that led him to add Kidd to his last name to honor a close uncle who died last year.

“Every day I do,” Kidd-Gilchrist said of how often he calls home. “They tell me, this is your dream.”

It has been his whole life, really. That much was clear to Lisa Padua, who taught Kidd-Gilchrist in middle school. He always knew he wanted to play basketball, Padua said. Even back in high school, he was fast and talented — and tall.

“Because he was growing so quickly, he would have to sit in class with ice on his knees because he was in so much pain,” Padua said. “We would keep ice bags in the fridge in the classroom for him.”

Padua, who taught math and English, had Kidd-Gilchrist in class all three years of his middle school career at Somerdale Park. Kidd-Gilchrist recently named her as one of his favorite teachers in a USA Today article, and he thinks of her as a “god-mom” now after all they’ve been through.

“I failed my first test in middle school,” Kidd-Gilchrist said. “I was just so down on myself, and she was there for me the whole time.”

That includes any struggles he had, including one meeting with his mother and faculty about academic problems. Kidd-Gilchrist overcame the setback with the same commitment that made Calipari say, “I’ve never seen him go anything but absolutely all out.” Padua said Kidd-Gilchrist didn’t change much over those three years, except for his academic growth.

“I think he stayed almost every single day after school with me to get done whatever he had to do,” Padua said. “That’s very unusual, for any middle schooler.”

His first name change was in an eighth-grade class; but that change was much more unofficial than the recent addition of Kidd to his surname.

“At one point, we were reading about Winston Churchill, and he said, ‘I like that name. I think I want to change my name to that,’” Padua said. “So that whole year in the classroom, he went by Winston instead of Michael. He was very receptive to it.”

And she was there through Kidd-Gilchrist’s last months in eighth grade, when he knew he would be moving away from the school system he’d been in since preschool to basketball high school powerhouse St. Patrick’s, about 70 miles away. It would be an adjustment, but one he made, rising to the top of the recruiting board in his early years.

Now he’s at college, where 500 tents, sitting in the 55-degree weather, circled the building to get tickets to watch him and the other UK players practice. Kidd-Gilchrist is inside. SportsCenter is on the widescreen TV in front of him. He will probably end up on the program himself plenty of times this year.

“I mean, I knew people would be camping, but,” Kidd-Gilchrist said, letting the sentence linger. “It’s even crazier than what I thought. But they’re here for us. I just want to get started.”