We named the dog Indiana...

Up and at em'.

In a few short hours, I will leave my modest dwellings and head for a far greater place. No, I am not terminally ill. I do have a sickness though. I am a follower, a devout one, of the Big Blue. A citizen of the EMPIRE.

For some, making a trek to Rupp Arena is as close to a religious pilgrimage as you can get. It's like going to Mecca. It's our Dome on the Rock, our Graceland. It's pull is strong and mighty.

When you go to Rupp, you change. Your demeanor is different. You are humbled by walking in those halls and aisles. You pay reverence. To barrow a line from the good book, you be still and know. No matter what you do for a living, where you come from, once your in that building, with all those people, you are truly one.

Enough of the over romanticising. Kentucky plays one of their traditional rivals today in the Hoosiers of Indiana. This match-up used to breed so much content and hatred between the two states. The days of Bobby Knight taking every pot shot he could at us and even smacking Joe B. in the head court side. It was like a hangover from the Civil War. They being the educated, and uppity North looking on us as if we were sitting on the porch watching slave labor and drinking Ice Tea. The dumb Southerners. Racist.

The Ohio River and our contributions to the South(Jefferson Davis) are all that really separate the two States. Not a real ideological difference. Basically, there is no difference. I like to think of them as our ill-advised cousins who moved north because they thought that would put them on top of us and weren't as good at basketball.

Make no bones about it, thanks to Danny Taylor, Bobby Knight, Isaiah Thomas, Big Red Headed F@*kers, and My ex's family starting a town there, I hate Indiana.

A while back, there was an annual event in Kentuckiana called the Big Four Classic. It would rotate match-ups amongst Kentucky, Louisville, Indiana, and Notre Dame. All four of those teams were traditional rivals. Every year they would play a set of two games at the Hoosier Dome, later the RCA Dome, now nothing. It lasted from 1987 to 1990. For what ever reason, it was discontinued. Kentucky, while taking part in the event, still played Indiana each and every season. It was just another interesting event, like the UKIT, that would die. We know Pitino did not like the UKIT format and that is why it went away. And no matter what he says, Digger Phelps was wanting to get as far away from the UK-ND rivalry as possible.

Hell, even the old ABA played off the rivalry between the states and had the Kentucky Colonels and Indiana Pacers.

While we don't play Notre Dame with as much regularity as we once did, but still often enough to hate the catholics, one thing that is as certain as death and taxes on the UK basketball schedule is Indiana. And with all the history, tradition and things in common between the two programs, states, and schools, along with incredible hatred, it is a must see game for fans of the game.(If I throw enough commas in there, it may save that sentence)ESPN will likely pull some good numbers from today's game, even though Indiana hasn't been that Indiana for a while now. But to me, I still see Bobby Knight and Red Headed douchers on that sideline... I will never stop hating Indiana, and those god-awful candy stripe barber pole warm ups.

Go Big Blue.