Pat Kelsey wishes UK/UL had been scheduled later, but thinks timing can be "exciting" for the sport

Mark Pope joked that we should all “blame Louisville” for the annual rivalry matchup taking place earlier than ever this season, essentially tipping off the regular season on November 11 rather than the Christmas present fans usually get in late December. It’s more of a Thanksgiving appetizer this go-round.

“Scheduling gets more increasingly, increasingly complicated, and, so, I think it was, I think it was what worked out best,” Pope said back in May. “… There are more important people dealing with those issues than me, but I’m sure it’s Louisville’s fault [laughs].”

What is Pat Kelsey‘s take on the scheduling decision? He’d have the game in December if it were his call, too. Instead, the two sides are making history by playing the game in November for just the third time ever (1983, 1993) — this matchup by far the earliest.

That’s just the way the cookie crumbled.

“It’s just kind of the way it worked out,” Kelsey told Jon Rothstein on Inside College Basketball Now. “If everybody had their druthers, it wouldn’t be that early in the season, but scheduling is difficult. I always liken it to putting a square peg in a round hole, getting different dates to work with different teams.

“Obviously, that’s a huge game in the state of Kentucky. You gotta find a place for it, it just worked out that way this year.”

It’s not what anybody wanted, but if Kelsey had to find a positive in the Nov. 11 date, what would it be? Some fans would argue there are none, he says, but the second-year Louisville coach does think it’ll add some early juice to the sport when the world is still in football mode.

“What’s the positive of it? If you polled our fanbase — probably on both sides — it would be about 99.9 percent, there are no positives. Play it later. But it’s a big game,” Kelsey said. “I think it’s an exciting thing for college basketball early on, to kind of get it going a little bit.

“That’s something that’s going to be circled on every college basketball fan’s schedule early on. It’ll get things off to a great start.”

Kentucky won the first head-to-head battle between Pope and Kelsey 93-85 inside Rupp Arena on Dec. 14 last season. The UK head coach believes that was the start of something special for both sides — because the Wildcats and Cardinals will both be competing atop the college basketball world year after year.

Pope obviously hopes the blue outplays the red each season, but the days of lopsided finishes killing fan interest are in the past. Iron will undoubtedly sharpen iron — Kentucky just a little sharper, obviously — leading to some heated wars in Lexington and Louisville.

“I actually think that this Kentucky-Louisville thing is just going to get heated and heated,” he told KSR in May. “You know why it’s going to get heated? Because it’s going to be back to being like No. 1 versus 4 in the country. … I’ve got a boatload of respect for Pat Kelsey, okay? I got so much.

“What he did last year was incredible, and two of my guys (Noah Waterman and Aly Khalifa) played for him last year, right? And what they accomplished — I don’t have a ton of interaction with the Louisville fan base, but I’m sure they’re great.”

Well, agree to disagree there, Pope. We get it, though.

Time to take care of (early) business inside the KFC Yum! Center.