LEXINGTON, Ky. _ When the University of Tennessee announced in 2012 that it would be demolishing its former basketball arena, the Stokely Athletic Center, former Kentucky coach Joe B. Hall joked that UT should invite him to flip the demolition switch.
No one walking the Earth, Hall said then, had more incentive to see Stokely blown to smithereens than him.
If you came of age following Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball in the 1970s and 1980s, even the thought of UK playing a basketball game in Knoxville filled you with dread.
In his 13 seasons (1972-1985) as Kentucky head coach, Hall saw his teams go 1-12 vs. Tennessee in Knoxville. (If that weren't enough torment for the coach in one building, UK also lost the massively hyped 1983 NCAA Tournament "Dream Game" to intrastate archrival Louisville in Stokely).
Before Tennessee moved into the cavernous Thompson-Bowling Arena for the 1987-88 season, UK was 2-13 in its final 15 games against the Volunteers in Stokely.
When John Calipari and the No. 15 Kentucky Wildcats (17-5, 7-2) pay a visit Saturday to Rick Barnes and the Tennessee Volunteers (13-9, 5-4 SEC) for a 1 p.m. tipoff, UK will be attempting to thwart a budding revival of a 1970s-style "Knoxville hex."
Since Barnes, the former Providence, Clemson and Texas head man, was hired by Tennessee before the 2015-16 season, the Volunteers are 4-0 vs. Kentucky on their home court. Overall, UT has won five of its last six vs. UK in Knoxville.
While not quite to the level of Hall's "at Tennessee" travails, Calipari has had a difficult time as UK head man winning at UT. Under Cal, Kentucky is 3-6 at Tennessee (due to ill-advised SEC scheduling contortions, the border rivals did not play in Knoxville in 2013-14).
The Vols are in something of a bridge year in 2019-20 after losing stars Grant Williams and Admiral Schofield, among others, off last season's 31-6 team that was ranked No. 1 in the country in both the Associated Press and coaches Top 25s for four weeks.
It behooves UK to take advantage of UT's season in transition. The Cats do not want to let their recent futility in Knoxville fester into something larger.
Saturday's meeting between Big Blue and Big Orange will be the 229th men's basketball game pairing Kentucky against Tennessee. UK has played no foe more often than UT.
The Wildcats have won 155 of the prior games, but Tennessee, with 73 victories over UK men's hoops teams, has also beaten Kentucky more often than any other opponent.
All-time, only 10 coaches have achieved double-digit wins against Kentucky.
Two of them, Ray Mears (15-15 vs. the Cats from 1962 through 1977) and Don DeVoe (11-12 vs. the Cats as UT coach from 1978 through 1989; 11-14 vs. UK overall), were Tennessee head men.
Barnes, 6-4 against Kentucky as the Vols' coach and 7-6 overall, seems on the way to joining them.
It chafes many UK fans that the Volunteers have historically been far more a thorn in Kentucky's side in the Wildcats' signature sport than the Cats are to the Vols in Tennessee's calling-card sport, football.
Since Thompson-Bowling Arena opened, winning there has been no piece of cake for UK _ but it has not been the house of horrors the Stokely Athletic Center was for the Cats in its latter years of use, either.
Even with the current four-game losing streak, Kentucky is 16-15 vs. Tennessee in Thompson-Boling.
There's a reason other than ending UT's recent home-court mastery of UK why Kentucky backers should fervently hope Nick Richards, Immanuel Quickley and the Wildcats win in Thompson-Boling on Saturday.
You do not have to be much of a Cats basketball scholar to know Kentucky has won eight NCAA championships.
Those eight teams _ 1947-48, 1948-49, 1950-51, 1957-58, 1977-78, 1995-96, 1997-98 and 2011-12 _ share one characteristic highly pertinent to Saturday's game.
No Kentucky team that went on to win an NCAA title has ever lost a game to Tennessee (of course, there have been UK squads that did not lose to UT that also did not go on to claim the NCAA championship).
Conversely, four UK Final Four teams that fell short of winning it all _ 1965-66, 1974-75, 1983-84 and 1992-93 _ lost in Knoxville.
So, too, did three strong Calipari-era UK teams, 2009-10, 2016-17 and last year, that would go on to fall in the NCAA tourney round of eight.
Make of that what you will.
But given the difficulty UK teams have so often had beating UT in Knoxville, it does not seem purely coincidental that the Wildcats squads that have had the talent and grit to claim the national title all were all also able to go to Knoxville and silence "Rocky Top."
