Monday night's game between Tennessee and Kentucky has more storylines than a prime time soap opera.
As if this clash between the Southeastern Conference's two best teams needed another dimension, it will be shown on ESPN in 3D.
The Big Monday contest in Knoxville will be the first women's basketball game to be shown in the special format.
So even though it's a game that ultimately could decide a tight conference race, Coach Matthew Mitchell was happy to have a little fun with it.
"Are we in 3D now?" he asked a large collection of media on Friday with a sly smile. "Will it be like we're in the living room of every one watching?"
Well, it will be for those with 3D televisions and the other proper accouterment, but for every one else it will still be a big game, which is why the UK coach hadn't really pondered the new format before he was asked at the news conference if it would change his sideline demeanor at all.
"I'll be honest with you, I'm not even sure what that means," he said of the broadcast in 3D. "My sideline demeanor will be altered only by the ... players we suit up down there. If they play great, I'll be smiling. If they don't, I'll be unhappy."
The team's lone broadcast journalism major, Keyla Snowden, laughed when asked about the format for Monday's game.
"It's cool," she said. "I've never played a game in 3D, so we'll see how it looks after it's over."
Confident Cats?
Kentucky's coach said he won't pretend to understand what goes on in the minds of his players, but he said if he was playing Tennessee, his team's previous win over the Vols this season would be a big confidence boost come game time.
"I shouldn't tell you what my players are thinking because often times, I don't know," he said.
"But if it were me, I'd gain tremendous confidence from what I had done against them," he said. "We clearly can match up and we don't have to have an out of body experience. We just need to go down and play Kentucky basketball."
The Cats have lost 15 in a row to Tennessee in Knoxville, but that's not this year's team, said guard A'dia Mathies, who hit the game-winning runner over the Vols on Jan. 12 to lift UK 61-60 in Lexington.
"They're going to want revenge so that they don't have that feeling they had last time," Mathies said, "but at the same time, we played a good game and know we can play even better this time."
Pink all over
Pink will be the new orange, at least for one night.
Although orange is the signature color for Tennessee, there will be plenty of pink at Thompson-Boling Arena as a part of the nationwide Play 4Kay initiative to raise breast cancer awareness.
The schedule includes five matchups featuring top-10 teams and it's a way for women's basketball programs to honor the late Kay Yow, the former coach of North Carolina State who died after a long struggle with breast cancer in 2009.
Kentucky will be wearing pink shoes and socks as well as pink shooting shirts for the game in Knoxville. The Cats will break out their own pink home uniforms for their game on the following Monday against No. 25 Vanderbilt at Memorial Coliseum.
