Bruiser Flint on the Vols' new look and Kentucky's next Super Bowl

Super Bowl Sunday is behind us, but Super Bowl Tuesday is here for Kentucky Basketball.

In the Wildcats’ next Super Bowl matchup, they’re in Knoxville to play 16th-ranked Tennessee in Thompson-Boling Arena tonight in the 9 p.m. game on ESPN. Kentucky assistant Bruiser Flint expects a raucous environment in Knoxville, but doesn’t worry it will faze the visiting team from Lexington.

“We’ve just got to get ourselves ready,” said Flint on Monday before the team departed for Tennessee. “We know we’re going into a hostile environment, but we go into a hostile environment every game we play. The one thing Cal says that is true that I’ve learned since I’ve been here, we are everybody’s Super Bowl.”

Flint can see it while studying tape of other teams, he said. “When you prepare for some of these games and you watch the stands from some of these games, and then you go in and we’re playing, you see it’s a big difference.”

He told the UK media on Monday’s Zoom, “It was funny, we had just played the Texas A&M game and we were here against Mississippi State and I was talking to their coaches and they talked about going to Kansas. I was like, honestly, we just came from a school that just had 14,000 that was averaging like eight. So, going into those types of games is not a big deal for us. I don’t think we get overwhelmed by the surroundings because we always get it.

“So just being able to be prepared for that, knowing we’re going to get the other team’s best effort every night. When we go on the road, we’re going to get the best effort from the fans.”

Flint got a small taste of being a road blue blood while an assistant at Indiana, but “not like this,” he added.

Tennessee’s new frontcourt brings more size

Kentucky will see a slightly different version of Tennessee from the one the Wildcats pummeled in Rupp Arena earlier this season. Since that Jan. 15 game, the Volunteers have switched up the starting lineup to include more size after the season-ending injury to Olivier Nkamhoua. Now Rick Barnes starts Brandon Huntley-Hatfield, a former Kentucky target, with Uros Plavsic where Nkamhoua and John Fulkerson once stood.

Kentucky assistant Bruiser Flint said the switch brings more size to the Vols’ frontcourt.

“They had an injury, so they’re playing way bigger than they did the first time with (Huntley-Hatfield) and (Plavsic),” said Flint in his pre-Tennessee game press conference. “Those two guys are starting and playing way more minutes than they had been playing in the first game.”

To Flint’s point, Huntley-Hatfield jumped to 14 minutes per game in his first two career starts in Tennessee’s two most recent games, wins over Mississippi State and Vanderbilt. However, Huntley-Hatfield isn’t a completely new threat to Kentucky because in the first meeting, he scored 11 points on 4-of-4 shooting from the field.

Plavsic, he brings size at seven feet tall and 250 pounds of Serbia. He wasn’t as impactful in the first Kentucky-Tennessee game, but moved into the starting five the following game because John Fulkerson was so bad. Plavsic has started all eight games since the trip to Rupp Arena and the Vols are 7-1 in that span.

“Rick Barnes is a guy who’s been around for a long time so he does what he does,” said Flint on Tennessee’s brand of basketball. “They’re going to play you hard, they’re going to play you tough, they’re going to play real physical against you, they’re going to play up in the passing lanes. They’re just a little bit bigger.”

Also working against Kentucky is Tennessee’s hunger to avenge the 30-point drumming in Lexington earlier this year.

“If I’m those guys, I remember we lost by 30 and they scored 100 points against us, so I’m sure the guys here know that and we’ve got to be ready for it. If not, they’re going to try to do the same thing to us.”