Gonzaga's Mark Few on the urgency of Kentucky matchup: 'They're desperate just like we are'

College basketball fans will be treated to a showdown between two of the game's biggest brands on Saturday, when the Gonzaga Bulldogs head to Rupp Arena to face the No. 17 Kentucky Wildcats.

While the out-of-conference matchup in mid-February is a rarity, it used to be a more common practice between Mark Few and John Calipari back when Calipari was building the Memphis Tigers into a national championship contender in the late 2000s. From 2007 to 2009, the two longtime friends brought their programs out of conference play in January and February to give each rising mid-major program a chance to boost its credibility on the national stage.

Calipari's team came out on top in all three head-to-head meetings in that span, two of which were in the Spokane Arena. In 2007, the No. 8 Tigers avoided an upset thanks to a Chris Douglas-Roberts layup in the final seconds of overtime, edging out Jeremy Pargo and Derek Raivio's Bulldogs. Douglas-Roberts torched Gonzaga the following season with 21 points, while freshman Derrick Rose added 19 for No. 1 Memphis, which went on to lose to Kansas in the national championship game later that season.

Few and Calipari met once more in Spokane in 2009, a 68-50 beatdown in favor of the Tigers, though it would be a while before the two Hall-of-Fame coaches went head-to-head again. Calipari took the head coaching job at Kentucky starting in the 2009-10 season, winning a national championship just two seasons later and making another title game appearance in 2014. Few, meanwhile, took Gonzaga to two national championship games himself and earned AP Coach of the Year in 2017, among the lengthy list of accolades in his illustrious 25-year career in Spokane.

John Stockton on Gonzaga's showdown with Kentucky: 'We are going to be the hungriest dog'

Safe to say both coaches are past the struggles of building small mid-majors into national powers, but their programs face a different sense of urgency as each tries to keep pace with the top teams in the country amid a wild college basketball season.

"They're desperate just like we are," Few said of Kentucky after Gonzaga's 96-64 win over Portland on Wednesday. "But man, they got high-level talent and Cal's done a good job of bringing in freshmen and then mixing in some experienced transfers."

The Wildcats and Bulldogs aren't in the same situation when it comes to each program's NCAA Tournament outlook, but there is certainly truth to Few's words given the last week for Calipari's team.

While there might not be a team in the country with a higher ceiling than the uber-talented Wildcats, who boast anywhere from 4-7 future NBA players, inconsistencies on the defensive end of the floor have some prognosticators playing a game of wait-and-see regarding Final Four aspirations.

Per KenPom, Kentucky ranks 102nd in adjusted defensive efficiency at 102.8 — the program's worst mark since the website began tracking the stat in 1997. Opponents have posted a 48.8% effective field goal rate, also the worst in the Calipari era, and have converted 48.8% of 2-point field attempts — again, the program's worst mark since 1997 and by no means championship-caliber numbers.

Poor pick-and-roll defense has caught up to the Wildcats in league play, as they've dropped three of their last five games heading into Saturday. In back-to-back losses at home to Florida (94-91) and Tennessee (103-92) last week, Kentucky allowed 98.5 points and 11.5 made 3-pointers across both games.

Despite a blistering offense that's No. 1 in the country in scoring and 11th in tempo, the losing skid dropped Kentucky from No. 6 to No. 17 in the AP Poll and down to fifth place in the SEC standings. Just two games back of South Carolina for first place with eight games left in league play, Kentucky still has time to tighten things up before the SEC Tournament in March.

Meanwhile, Gonzaga's chances of extending its streak to 25 consecutive NCAA appearances could solely rely on it winning the West Coast Conference Tournament if it doesn't pull off the upset on Saturday. Though they sit at 25th in the NET Rankings, the Bulldogs are 0-5 in Quad 1 games with their best nonconference win coming against Yale (84th in the NET) in the season opener. That puts a lot of pressure on Few's program to handle business down the stretch of the regular season, with just two more Quad 1 opportunities in league play against San Francisco (Feb. 29) and Saint Mary's (March 2), with both contests away from home.

If those opportunities are squandered and Gonzaga doesn't claim the WCC Tournament championship, Selection Sunday will be quite stressful in Spokane. Since the NET was introduced in the 2018-19 season, just four teams have received an at-large bid with fewer than two Quad 1 wins — NC State (2023), Syracuse (2021), Drake (2021) and Nevada (2019). Last season, only one team (Utah State) earned an at-large bid without a Quad 1 victory on its resume.

Looking past where each team currently stands, there's no denying the beauty in having two of the most dominant programs in the sport in recent memory come together on a Saturday afternoon in February.

"When Gonzaga plays Kentucky, that's a really, really big thing for college basketball," Few said. "Regardless of what's happening with the particular season."