Gary Parrish of CBS Sports.com has planned his weekend and Lexington is first on his travel stops.
Parrish previews Kentucky as the top game of the weekend and thinks the UK/UoL rivalry is the best thing going.
[I]LEXINGTON, Ky. — Are there better places to spend New Year’s Eve than Kentucky? [/I]
[I]Yes. [/I]
[I]Are there better places to spend Saturday than Rupp Arena? [/I]
[I]Absolutely not. [/I]
[I]Let’s do the [B]Weekend Look Ahead[/B]. [/I]
[B][/B]
[I][B]Top game:[/B] Losing to Georgetown on Wednesday took a little luster off of Louisville’s Saturday showdown vs. Kentucky, but not much. Because this is still the No. 4 Cardinals vs. the No. 3 Wildcats. And it’s still Rick Pitino vs. John Calipari. (And they still despise each other.) And it’s still rival programs separated by only 80 miles, and if there’s a better way to start a New Year’s Eve party, man, I don’t know what it is. Rupp Arena will be bananas from early morning till the final buzzer. Can’t wait to get there.[/I]
[I][B]Final thought:[/B] I know Duke-North Carolina is the perceived premier rivalry in college basketball. [/I]
[I]It’s like Yankees-Red Sox. [/I]
[I]It’s like Ohio State-Michigan. [/I]
[I]But for my money, in the Year 2011, there’s no better rivalry in sports than Kentucky-Louisville because it meets every possible criteria. The two schools are near one another. Both are nationally relevant. They’re led by elite and high-profile coaches, one of whom used to coach at the other school. And those two coaches don’t care for each other at all. “They hate each other,” UK freshman Anthony Davis [/I][URL=”http://twitter.com/#!/KernelASmith/statuses/152813561566068736″][COLOR=#3b5998][I]answered Friday[/I][/COLOR][/URL][I] when asked what he’s heard about the relationship between Calipari and Pitino. “One always goes out and parties when the other loses.” [/I]
[I]So what we have Saturday isn’t just the Louisville vs. Kentucky rivalry. [/I]
[I]We have the Pitino vs. Calipari rivalry, too. [/I]
[I]And the Pitino vs. his old school rivalry. [/I]
[I]So this is Duke vs. North Carolina, Pete Carroll vs. Jim Harbaugh and Nick Saban vs. LSU all rolled into one. And that it’s happening while both schools are ranked in the top five of the AP poll only makes it that much bigger. Will it decide a national championship? Of course not. But, trust me, Louisville and Kentucky fans — not to mention Pitino and Calipari — will be just about as thrilled with a win Saturday as they would with one on the first Monday night in April. [/I]
[URL=”http://www.cbssports.com/collegebasketball/story/16648182/weekend-look-ahead-louisvillekentucky-has-it-all-when-it-comes-to-rivalry”][I]Read Entire Article[/I][/URL]
