LEXINGTON, Ky. — The first Kentucky-Louisville game in this new era of college basketball in the commonwealth is almost here.

Mark Pope’s Wildcats will see Pat Kelsey’s Cardinals on the Rupp Arena court at 5:15 p.m. Saturday, the first meeting between the two new coaches. Pope knows plenty about this rivalry, playing in two editions of it as a Wildcat during the 1990s.

Pope’s Cats — ranked No. 5 in the latest AP Top 25 poll — will be clear favorites over Kelsey’s short-handed Cards, but strange things have been known to happen in this series, and Kentucky’s coaches have not traditionally fared well in their first game against Louisville.

Of the six UK coaches who have preceded Pope in the job, only two have won their first game in the rivalry. Strangely enough, all six of those coaches played their first regular-season game against the Cards in Rupp Arena, and Pope will get that same advantage Saturday night.

Here’s a look at how each of Pope’s predecessors did in the Kentucky-Louisville rivalry.

John Calipari

— The game: Louisville at No. 3 Kentucky (Jan. 2, 2010, in Rupp Arena).

— The result: This was one of those “Rupp Arena on edge” situations, with longtime rivals John Calipari and Rick Pitino meeting for the umpteenth time in their careers but the first in this UK-Louisville rivalry. The crowd was hot before tipoff, and the players — though many of them were new to the situation — got the memo. Calipari removed Eric Bledsoe from the game after he and Reginald Delk (nephew of Tony Delk) got into it just eight seconds after tipoff. Less than a minute in, three players were issued technical fouls after a skirmish on the floor. “Wow! This is out of hand. This is completely out of hand,” said CBS announcer Clark Kellogg as players were separated and the Rupp crowd — an all-time record 24,479 in attendance — went wild. Neither team had even attempted a shot yet, and six total fouls had already been called. It wasn’t the prettiest of basketball games from there — a total of 51 fouls and five technicals ended up in the box score — and UK defeated Louisville, 71-62.

— Career vs. the Cards: Calipari has been the ultimate Card killer in this rivalry, going 13-3 against Kentucky’s in-state rival, with a 7-0 record in Rupp and two wins over U of L in the NCAA Tournament (including one in the Final Four, on the Cats’ way to the 2012 national title). No UK coach has a better winning percentage against the Cardinals.

Billy Gillispie

— The game: Louisville at Kentucky (Jan. 5, 2008, in Rupp Arena).

— The result: Aside from the COVID-19-impacted 2020-21 season, this is the last time that both teams were unranked going into the rivalry game. The Wildcats actually led 31-30 at halftime, but Pitino and the Cards got the better of them coming out of the break. Louisville went on a 32-9 run to start the second half, the margin never got back into the single digits from there, and the Cards ended up with an 89-75 victory. Ramel Bradley scored a game-high 27 points in a losing effort for Kentucky, which dropped to 6-7 with the loss, an inauspicious start to the short-lived Billy Gillispie era. Fun fact: Gillispie ended Louisville’s previous season with a win over the Cards in Rupp Arena, his Texas A&M squad defeating them in the second round of the NCAA Tournament there. Gillispie was named Kentucky’s new head coach three weeks later.

— Career vs. the Cards: Gillispie, of course, lasted only two seasons with the Wildcats, so he got just one more shot in this rivalry game. He lost that one, too, though it was much closer. U of L’s Edgar Sosa nailed a long 3-pointer with 2.3 seconds left to give the 18th-ranked Cards a 74-71 win over UK in Freedom Hall, leaving Gillispie with an 0-2 record against U of L as the Cats’ coach.

Tubby Smith

— The game: Louisville at No. 4 Kentucky (Dec. 27, 1997, in Rupp Arena).

— The result: Tubby Smith’s Cats brought an eight-game win streak — all but one of those victories coming by double digits — into his first rivalry game against Louisville, and it was played in the friendly confines of Rupp, where Kentucky hadn’t lost to a nonconference opponent — and had lost just three games, period — over the previous five seasons. All of that came crashing to an end in this one, with Denny Crum’s Cardinals pulling off a major upset, beating the Cats, 79-76. Kentucky went just 5 for 23 from 3-point range against Louisville’s zone that day, shooting 37.5% from the floor, while the Cards shot 12 for 22 from long range. UK won nine straight games after this embarrassing loss, ultimately winning the 1998 national championship in Smith’s first season as head coach.

— Career vs. the Cards: As far as this rivalry goes, things got worse for Smith before they got better. He also lost game two against Louisville, his 1998-99 team falling, 83-74, to the unranked Cards despite going into Freedom Hall as the No. 3 team in the country. The next three editions gave UK fans more to smile about: a 30-point win in 1999, a victory over the Cards in Crum’s final game of the rivalry, and then a 20-point rout in Rick Pitino’s first UK-U of L game on the other side. Smith ended up with a 6-4 record against Louisville as head coach of the Cats.

Rick Pitino

— The game: No. 8 Louisville at Kentucky (Dec. 30, 1989, in Rupp Arena).

— The result: Of all the coaches on this list, Rick Pitino went into his first game in the rivalry under the worst circumstances. The new UK coach took over a depleted roster under probation from the previous era, and his Cats had a 5-4 record — with a 55-point loss at Kansas and a home defeat at the hands of Southwestern Louisiana among the lowlights — going into the Louisville game. Denny Crum’s Cardinals were a top-10 team, and LaBradford Smith ended up scoring 22 points to lead them to an 86-79 victory. In another example of this heated rivalry getting physical, Smith and UK’s Sean Woods earned double technicals following a series of pushing and shoving that featured several players from both teams and ended up with Pitino and reserves from each side out on the court. It was UK’s first loss to Louisville in Rupp Arena.

— Career vs. the Cards: Pitino won his next four games against Louisville, the first such streak in the modern history of the rivalry and the last until Calipari showed up (and did it twice). Pitino’s only other loss on the Kentucky side came in “The Samaki Walker Game” — the one where the Louisville big man went for 14 points, 10 rebounds and 11 blocked shots in what happened to be Mark Pope’s first UK-U of L game as a player. Pitino, Pope and the Cats beat the Cards the following season, and the coach ended up with a 6-2 record against Louisville. (Pitino was 6-12 against the Cats as head coach of the Cards, losing eight of 10 to Calipari.)

Eddie Sutton

— The game: No. 15 Louisville at No. 13 Kentucky (Dec. 28, 1985, in Rupp Arena).

— The result: A loss at No. 7 Kansas was the only blemish on Kentucky’s record when the Wildcats hosted the Cardinals for Eddie Sutton’s first rivalry game, a battle of top-15 teams. In this one, the Cards shot 58.0% from the floor, but the Cats outscored them by 13 points at the foul line (getting 25 free-throw attempts to just seven for Louisville) in a 69-64 win. UK went into the NCAA Tournament ranked No. 3 in the country, but the Cats were upset by LSU in the regional finals. Louisville went on to win its last 17 games of the 1985-86 season, lifting the NCAA championship trophy by the end of it.

— Career vs. the Cards: Sutton ended up with a 3-1 record in the rivalry, and his 1986-87 Wildcats still hold the mark for biggest blowout in the Kentucky-Louisville series with an 85-51 win at Freedom Hall that season. (Rex Chapman scored 26 points and threw down his iconic one-handed, fast-break dunk in that one.) Sutton’s only loss to the Cards came in his fourth and final season, a 97-75 defeat that remains the Cats’ most lopsided defeated in the rivalry.

Joe B. Hall

— The game: No. 12 Kentucky vs. No. 2 Louisville (March 26, 1983, in Knoxville, Tenn.).

— The result: The first meeting of the two in-state powers in 24 years, “The Dream Game” took place in the Mideast regional finals of the 1983 NCAA Tournament and ultimately led to the revival of the yearly series between the two sides. Joe B. Hall’s Wildcats forced overtime with a last-second shot by Jim Master, but the Cards dominated the extra period, won 80-68 and advanced to the Final Four for the second consecutive season (where they lost to Houston in the national semifinals). UK and Louisville, which hadn’t played in the regular season since 1922, began an annual series later that year.

— Career vs. the Cards: The Cats and Cards began the 1983-84 season with the rivalry game, and Hall’s team came out on top in his first regular-season battle with Louisville (a 65-44 win in Rupp Arena in a matchup of two top-10 teams). Kentucky also defeated U of L in the NCAA Tournament that season — on its way to the 1984 Final Four — and Hall’s Cats lost to the Cards in Freedom Hall the following season, giving him a 2-2 record against them. Denny Crum, who went on to host a radio show with Hall years later, ended up with a 7-13 record against UK.

Saturday

Louisville at No. 5 Kentucky

— When: 5:15 p.m.

— TV: ESPN

— Records: Louisville 6-4, Kentucky 9-1

— Series: Kentucky leads 39-17

— Last meeting: Kentucky won 95-76 on Dec. 21, 2023, in Louisville

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