If you find yourself with a little extra time Saturday night, the biggest regular season basketball game of the year (sorry Duke/UNC) will be on ESPN.

Memphis and Tennessee, the number 1 and 2 teams in the country, square off and for Memphis, it’s a chance to finish the regular season undefeated and will likely be their last big test before the start of the NCAA season. For Tennessee, it’s a chance to show that they’re deserving of their ranking and not just there by process of elimination.

What I like about this game is the matchup between the coaches. The ultra-slick John Calipari, who has managed to recruit kids to Memphis and turn that program into a perennial powerhouse (in a laughably bad conference) versus the Massachusetts motormouth Bruce Pearl, who’s taken some degree of joy in being the SEC’s resident antagonizer. While I think Calipari is a better coach, I think Pearl is a much better motivator and can’t typically get more out of less.

Memphis has been incredibly tough at home and played a pretty good non-conference schedule. But I don’t think there is nearly as much of a home court advantage here than if they were playing in Knoxville. The FedEx Forum isn’t some cozy on-campus arena where the fans are on top of the players, it’s a major arena and I think that is to the venue’s detriment. That being said, that arena will be loud and the atmosphere will be electric.

Earlier this week, Calipari was on PTI and poo-pooed the idea that his team’s glaring weakness is it’s terrible free-throw shooting. He said he didn’t care that all of his team’s were terrible from the charity stripe and said if he evaluated a player and he was looking for the top 25 things in any player, how good of a free throw shooter they were would be 26. A point that is too stupid for words. Think of how many games in the NCAA tournament comes down to free throw shooting. When I hear John Calipari say that he doesn’t care about free throw shooting, it sounds an awful lot like a coach who has never won a national championship.

Despite the fact that I think Memphis has absolutely no chance to win the national championship, I’ll take the Tigers in a close game. I think the athleticism of Memphis will just be too much for Tennessee down the stretch. If Bruce Pearl can figure out a defensive scheme that can bottle Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts, they definitely have a much better chance of getting a huge win on the road. Tennessee may have their best success running a 2-3 zone and forcing Rose and Douglas-Roberts to drive and kick out to the perimeter where Memphis is shooting just 33% from beyond the arc, a percentage that doesn’t rank in Division I’s Top 50 teams.

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