ST. LOUIS — Imagine you’re a Kentucky fan still living in October 2013 and have a chance to travel through time to March 2014.You, swelling with the anticipation of the season and talk of a possible 40-0 season, land in the bowels of the Scottrade Center and end up in the Wildcats’ locker room on Saturday afternoon. You see the cameras, the reporters and a feeling of overwhelming hype and you think to yourself, “Everything has gone as planned.”Only, it’s not the plan of the Kentucky Wildcats.Instead, when eighth-seeded UK (25-10) takes the court on Sunday with a chance to advance to the Sweet 16 for the fourth time in five seasons, it will be the Wichita State Shockers (35-0) — not the preseason No. 1 team — who are looking to continue an undefeated if not improbable season.The irony — from every end of the spectrum — is as thick as it is juicy. If it isn’t the most compelling round-of-32 matchup over the last decade or so, it’s certainly the most intriguing of this hard-to-turn-away-from tournament. Sunday will feature so many storylines that reporters — including this one — were tripping over themselves Friday night when Kentucky finished off Kansas State.You’ve got kids who were recruited by every school in the country vs. kids who were overlooked by most. There’s the big school with the big fan base — perhaps the most recognizable in all of college basketball — against the little guys in the Missouri Valley Conference. Then there’s the whole one-and-done freshman team vs. the older, more experienced group.And of course, this one will pit a team that was discussed as a potential 40-0 team against one that’s kept the dream alive.UK sophomore Willie Cauley-Stein, sitting in that locker room on Saturday with a dozen or so reporters in his face, almost sounded glad his team, the one that was favored to win it all at the beginning of the season, is the one trying to play spoiler. To think about being undefeated at this point in the year and trying to complete what has never been done before (other teams have gone undefeated; just never 40-0) is a burden Cauley-Stein is happy his team doesn’t have.”That’s a lot of unwanted pressure to think about,” Cauley-Stein said. “I mean, you see where that got us in the beginning of the year before we even played a game. It’s just an unwanted burden.”Those expectations — perhaps impossible to meet for 18- and 19-year-olds playing against one of the nation’s toughest schedules in unrelenting pressure and under the national spotlight at Kentucky — nearly ended up destroying Kentucky’s season for the second year in a row.The Cats lost 10 games this season — way more than anyone could have anticipated — but they’ve turned it around and are still in a position to achieve their ultimate goals of a Final Four berth and national championship. In hindsight, Cauley-Stein said the pressure was unfair on them.”That’s just unnecessary pressure on us, especially for guys that don’t really know how to play with a team,” he said. “They’ve all been that dude on their team in high school, so like the stuff runs through them and now you’ve got eight guys that can play the game of basketball instead of just one or two. We’re figuring out that if you share the ball you’re still going to get a lot of shots and probably more. That’s the difference of who Wichita State is and who we are. They’ve been here for three to four years and know how to play with each other. We’re just figuring it out.”The Cats are figuring out late in the year how to be more like Wichita State and less like the talented but divided group of individuals they were at beginning of the season, but it still doesn’t change the backgrounds and the tantalizing story heading into Sunday.From the recruiting side of things, Wichita State is a group of kids that, according to Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall, weren’t even on the “second-level down from Kentucky’s recruits.”None of Wichita State’s players sitting at the podium on Saturday — Ron Baker, Tekele Cotton and Darius Carter — said they were recruited by UK. “I bet not one player on our team got a form letter from Kentucky,” Marshall said. Likewise, Marshall never recruited a single player on UK’s roster or, believe it or not, even heard of them because of an inability to talk to kids of that caliber at a program like Wichita State. “It’s just a whole different level of recruiting and whatnot,” Marshall said. “They do what works well for them and we try to do what works well for us.”And the Shockers do pretty much everything well. Since their surprising run to the Final Four last season, which included an upset of the top seed in their region, Gonzaga, and a near victory over eventual national champion Louisville, all they’ve done is win. Thirty-five in a row, to be exact.While the resume lacks quality wins — the Shockers have beaten the likes of Tennessee and BYU but hadn’t played an NCAA Tournament opponent since Dec. 22 until Friday night — part of that has to do with Wichita State’s quality of play and not the school’s inability to schedule top-level teams.The school took a major blow when Creighton left the conference for greener pastures, but more so than that, few people want to play the Shockers without an unfair deal that Wichita State’s athletic director is wisely not settling for.So Wichita State just keeps playing who it plays and keeps winning. “You don’t go 35 or 36-0 or whatever they are without having really good players,” Calipari said. “And they have really good players.”But even those really good players, a couple of whom have watched Kentucky basketball from afar, realize the magnitude of Sunday’s game. While UK is trying to rewrite its season, Wichita State is trying to validate its. “This is a big step in the road,” Baker sad. “It is a big game for us as players, individuals, for our university. And you kind of look at it as a bigger picture.”Marshall, whose attention to detail was on full display Saturday when he rattled off memories, names from his past and even a UK game in the 1970s, has actually embraced the run for perfection with his team. He wants his group to be special and keep the winning streak going, but he also doesn’t want his players to look past the weekend.”Our goal this weekend is to be 2-0 and to win two games in order to get to the next weekend,” Marshall said. “Right now we have won one and we have one to go.”Calipari, on the flipside, doesn’t want his team to get caught up in the fray, but there’s little hiding the juiciness or the irony of Sunday’s UK-Wichita State game.”At this point I just don’t want my team to make this game bigger than it is,” Coach Cal said. “It’s a basketball game.”A basketball game with some seriously good storylines. To bring you more expansive coverage, CoachCal.com and Cat Scratches will be joining forces for the postseason. You can read the same great stories you are accustomed to from both sites at CoachCal.com and UKathletics.com/blog, but now you’ll enjoy even more coverage than normal.