Kentucky's season opener against Duke on Tuesday night is the polar opposite UK's football showdown against Georgia on Saturday.
The football game was a culmination of a surprising breakthrough UK fans have been waiting decades to experience. The stakes were stratospheric: a division title and place in the Southeastern Conference's championship game.
The highly anticipated basketball game overflows with sizzle. Two of the bluest of college basketball's blue-blood programs renew a rivalry made all but more delicious by its infrequent actual on-court competition.
"This game will move the interest needle among sports fans as much as any game we have on our air all year long," said ESPN analyst Jay Bilas, the color analyst for UK-Duke.
Jay Williams, another ESPN analyst who will be in Indianapolis, called the UK-Duke game "a treat for college basketball."
But whatever unfolds in Indianapolis is a mere first paragraph _ albeit a star-studded, blinking-neon-sign-like first paragraph _ for the 2018-19 college basketball season. As UK coach John Calipari repeatedly reminds, the NCAA Tournament is the prize that all eyes must remained fixed upon.
Of this Kentucky-Duke game, Calipari said, "If you win, it's huge. If you lose, you just put it in the rearview mirror, learn from it and go on to the next game."
For Kentucky, that next game will be at home against Southern Illinois on Friday.
At a news conference Sunday, Calipari said familiar words: He does not want the Cats to look February good in November. Message: UK-Duke can peak interest, but not performance. "We want to just continue the gradual climb in what we're doing," Calipari said.
Any resemblance between what happens at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Tuesday and a theoretical rematch deep in the 2019 NCAA Tournament will be purely coincidental.
"Both of these teams will be completely different units in five months, regardless of who the winner is," Williams said.
Cameron Mills, one of UK's heroes in the Elite Eight victory over Duke in the 1998 NCAA Tournament, spoke of all-and-nothing nature of Tuesday's game.
"I kind of hate it and like it," he said. "I'm excited because I think we'll very quickly see where we are. But this is an end-of-the-year game. ... I don't think it's going to be indicative of who either of these teams really, really are. Because I just think it's too early. Too much is going to change.
"Whatever we're going to see, I don't want to call it a lie. But I think it's going to be inaccurate."
Not for the first time, Calipari held up Kentucky's two games against UCLA in the 2016-17 season as evidence of how a postseason game can bear little resemblance to what happened in the regular season. UCLA won in Rupp Arena in early December that season. Freshman TJ Leaf (17 points and 13 rebounds) surprised UK. Then, with De'Aaron Fox dominating Lonzo Ball, Kentucky won 86-75 in the Sweet 16.
However tiny the postseason implications might be, UK players sounded eager to play in such an attention-getting opening game.
"I love it," PJ Washington said. "I'm a competitor. I always want to win. I always want to beat the better team. To be the best, you've got to beat the best."
Reid Travis echoed the sentiment.
"I'm excited," he said. "I'm excited to play our first game against such a big-time program. ... I think it's the best thing for us. ... Kind of get thrown into the fire right away and kind of see where we're at. And we've got a lot of things to work on. To be able to use this as a measuring stick, I think is going to be great for us."
Duke features three of the highest-regarded freshmen in college basketball this season: Cam Reddish, RJ Barrett and Zion Williamson. Kentucky might look for its four "bigs" to exploit a Duke interior that is a less-heralded component.
But the X-and-O details and postseason implications seem secondary to the thrill of a big game.
"This is more a great game just to play it and be a part of it," Bilas said. "But it's also a great gauge. It's like having a final exam at the beginning of the semester."
