Mark Pope's Kentucky team made the trip to Knoxville to take on the Tennessee Volunteers in a game no one thought the shorthanded Wildcats would win. Despite this, without Lamont Butler and Andrew Carr,

Initially, many Kentucky fans weren’t sold on Pope, whose BYU team made an early exit from the NCAA Tournament last March. He didn’t have the sexy resume, wasn’t drenched in blue-blood perfume from the Big Ten or SEC that would warrant taking such a lofty post in Lexington.

There’s more at stake in Tuesday night’s Kentucky-Tennessee basketball game than simply a win against an SEC rival.