As they prepare for tonight's rematch at Target Center, the Wolves say that was the night they knew what kind of team they could be but are at a loss to explain why there wasn't any carryover from it.

"I really was surprised," center Al Jefferson said. "To beat a team like Detroit on their home floor, then we come back like we ain't never played this game before in our life. I was more shocked than anything that we couldn't build off of it, but that's in the past. We're playing real well right now."

With an NBA-best 10-2 record in January after Monday night's 90-83 win at Milwaukee, the Wolves are officially the hottest team in the league.

The current success came far too late for Wittman, who was fired and replaced by former vice president of Basketball operations Kevin McHale on Dec. 8 after a 4-15 start.

Guard Randy Foye, who had a team-high 23 points and 14 assists in the Nov. 23 win over Detroit, said his performance and the team's were the result of Wittman loosening the reins on his players.

"He just simplified a lot of things," Foye said. "He just ran less plays and we went out there and played, played freely. We just were playing. If a guy was open in the post, you gave it to him. If I could create on a pick and roll, he let me do it. It just was fun. That was probably one of the funnest games I had this year."

So, why couldn't the Wolves keep it up and continue playing like they have for the past month?

Foye said he and the entire team had a completely different attitude at the time.

"The way we were playing, we weren't even playing mediocre Basketball," he said. "We were basically playing win one game, lose six. Win one, lose six. And every time we won a game, it felt like we won a championship. Now if you look around here, if you look at these games right here, we're supposed to beat these teams. Now if we lose, we're upset with each other. It's a different attitude."

The Wolves proved that when they dropped the final game of a recent three-game road trip at Utah after back-to-back wins over Phoenix and the Los Angeles Clippers.

Earlier in the season, Foye said the team would have been satisfied with taking two of three. This time, they were angry.

"We were real (ticked) in the locker room," he said. "In the past, my first two years, we would be excited that we won two games, but we wanted to win all three. We knew we were capable of winning all three."

Unlike the Wolves, the Pistons haven't been playing well lately, with a 24-19 record that includes seven losses in their past nine games.

Even so, Wolves forward Ryan Gomes, who had 20 points in the season's first meeting, knows there's no way he and his teammates can take Detroit lightly. Especially with weekend games against last year's NBA finalists, the Los Angeles Lakers and at the Boston Celtics, to follow.

"They're going to come out ready to play," Gomes said of the Pistons. "They're not playing their best; they're trying to find their way and get over the hump. But we have to go out there and play with a lot of defensive pressure and then worry about the other games after that. Not to say that we don't know who we've got after that, but we still have to focus on Detroit because we have them on our home court. We know they're going to try to repay the favor."

Injury watch: McHale said he was hopeful point guard Sebastian Telfair would play tonight after suffering a bruised thigh muscle Monday.

Guard Kevin Ollie has been doing some running and right-handed shooting while coming back from a dislocated left elbow and will begin working in some left-handed ballhandling soon.

McHale said the Wolves will see Ollie in Boston on Sunday and that he will return to the Twin Cities after that to have the elbow re-evaluated.