Louisville brought in College of Charleston head coach Pat Kelsey, who took over after Kenny Payne was fired after two seasons. Meanwhile, Kentucky hired BYU head man Mark Pope following John Calipari’s departure for Arkansas. Additionally, both coaching are bringing in completely new rosters from top to bottom.

On the Louisville side of things, Kelsey, a Cincinnati native and Xavier alum, doesn’t have as much prior experience with the rivalry as Pope does, who played for Kentucky during the mid-1990’s and helped them win the 1996 national championship. But even from afar, Kelsey knew how big the rivalry was before taking the job – and if he didn’t, fans certainly made sure to remind him once he got here.

“When you talk about some of the great rivalries in American sports, really not just college basketball, Louisville-Kentucky is one of them,” Kelsey said. “Obviously being in this town, and in your boots being planted here, they made it very, very clear early on how big this rivalry was. … It was solidified in my mind very clearly by everybody, but I was well aware before coming here.”

Fans were quick to ingratiate their new players into the rivalry as well. Before the players had the chance to even suit up and play in their first scrimmage, they were bombarded with one simple message from the fanbase: you could lose every other game on the schedule, but it wouldn’t matter so long as you beat that team down I-64.

“As soon as I committed, it was all about ‘beat Kentucky’,” guard Reyne Smith said. “You see on social media the two fan bases kind of going back and forth with each other, so i kind of knew straight away what it actually meant.”

Despite Louisville-Kentucky being one of the most vitriolic rivalries in collegiate athletics (look no further than the legendary dialysis clinic story), it’s also been very one-sided as of late. The Wildcats have won 13 of the last 16 matchup, and head into Saturday’s showdown having won the last two by an average of 21 points.