ESPN doing an All-Access presentation of Kentucky vs. Auburn

ESPN decided to send College Gameday to Gainesville for No. 12 Texas A&M at No. 3 Florida instead of Lexington for No. 1 Auburn at No. 17 Kentucky; however, the network still has big plans for the clash between the Cats and the Tigers.

Today, ESPN announced it will do an “All Access” presentation of Kentucky vs. Auburn on Saturday (1 p.m. ET, ABC/ESPN+). That means both Bruce Pearl and Mark Pope will be mic’d up throughout the game and both teams will open their locker rooms to ESPN’s cameras, giving viewers access to the pregame and halftime talks, sideline instructions, and timeout huddles. With a coach as animated as Pearl and one as unique as Pope, that’ll be must-see TV.

Kentucky vs. Auburn will still get ESPN’s A-crew even though College Gameday is going to Florida. Dan Shulman, Jay Bilas, and Jess Sims will be on the call Saturday afternoon. Bilas will join College Gameday remotely from Lexington. You can see that starting at 10 a.m. Saturday on ESPN. Tom Hart and Ron Slay (yes, the former Tennessee Vol) will call Texas A&M at Florida at 8:30 p.m. ET on the SEC Network.

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First things first: Oklahoma

Kentucky has a pretty huge basketball game before the No. 1 Tigers come to town. Tomorrow night, the Cats play Oklahoma in Norman, another tricky road game against an NCAA Tournament bubble team. Although it is tempting to look ahead to Saturday’s game vs. the No. 1 team in the country, Mark Pope knows better, as he explained to a fan on last night’s call-in show.

“You’re gonna be really disappointed in me; I’ve spent exactly zero seconds thinking about Auburn, and it’s not because — they are the number one team in the country, and it’s a huge game at home for us. It’s going to be really incredible but one of the things about playing in this league, you can’t overlook anybody, because everybody is so good. And so we have a huge road game at Oklahoma on Wednesday, and so I haven’t got there.”

That said, Pope said some members of his staff are working on advanced prep, not just for Auburn but for the final two games of the regular season, LSU and Missouri.

“We do have an advanced scout team that’s working very, very hard prepping for Auburn, and then some guys that are working on LSU, and even some guys that are touching Missouri right now, but that won’t get to my desk until about 90 minutes after the buzzer sounds that Oklahoma is the first time that I’ll dive into Auburn, as we travel home.”

Beat Oklahoma. Then beat Auburn.