LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Teams have run with Kentucky. Teams have tried to punch the Wildcats in the mouth.Some have sunk into zone defenses and challenged the Cats to hit from the outside. Some have gone with full-court pressure against UK.For what seems like every one of the Cats’ wins, opponents have gone with a different approach to hand them their first loss. “They gotta run out eventually,” Willie Cauley-Stein said. “They try everything. You got to though. You can’t get mad at it. I would do the same thing.”Of course, none of it’s worked.Top-seeded UK has charged through 35 games without a loss to tie the best start to a season in NCAA history. The Cats will look to take over the record on their own when they face eighth-seeded Cincinnati (23-10) at approximately 2:40 p.m. on Saturday at the KFC Yum! Center.When they do, they’ll take on an opponent they expect to try a familiar game plan.”We just know that they’re going to play extremely hard and try to bully us,” Cauley-Stein said. “They play that zone. That’s really all we’ve looked at so far. We’ll know more about probably an hour.”Cauley-Stein would have to wait an hour because the Cats had yet to spend much time preparing for the Bearcats as of Friday afternoon. The final buzzer didn’t sound on their second-round NCAA Tournament win over Hampton until well after midnight and the team bus didn’t pull into the hotel until close to 3 a.m.But that would change at UK’s practice later in the day, when John Calipari would reinforce the message about what to expect from Cincinnati. “The stuff that has affected us, real physical play, stretching our big guys out, playing a zone and doing stuff, that’s all what Cincinnati does,” Calipari said. “We know we’re in for a tough game. They fought all year and deserve to be in a position they’re in. A great win. It’s going to be a really hard game for us.”The great win Coach Cal referenced was a 66-65 overtime triumph against Purdue. In the game, the Bearcats trailed by seven with less than a minute to play before charging back and forcing the extra session on a buzzer-beating layup by Troy Caupain.The victory sets up a showdown between two schools separated by barely 80 miles. There are fans of both schools on either side of the Kentucky-Ohio border, a fact that does not escape the Bearcats.”Being that they are really close to us, we see the things fans and all the blue,” sophomore forward Gary Clark said. “We go over to Kentucky to the movie theater, and there’s dinner and restaurants. So we see the fans all the time.”In fact, their coach used to be one of them. Growing up in Mount Sterling, Ky., Larry Davis – serving as interim coach with head coach Mick Cronin out for the season with an unruptured aneurysm – listened to UK games on the radio with his father before attending Asbury College.”I had some friends there in college whose father had some tickets, and any chance we could, we followed the national championship team with (Jack) Goose Givens and those guys,” Davis said. “So I’ve always had a lot of respect for Kentucky basketball.”For the Cats, the proximity adds a little something extra, though playing for the right to continue their season is motivation enough.”This has a little more pride on the line,” Karl-Anthony Towns said. “It’s around the hometown. You gotta protect home at all costs, so like I said, we’re going to go out there and play to the best of our abilities for that night and just see how it falls.”Towns expects the same of Cincinnati.”They’re going to be playing like it’s their Super Bowl,” Towns said. “But not only is it going to be their Super Bowl, it’s going to be their Super Bowl, their NBA Finals, their Stanley Cup Finals. I mean, everything together is coming here and we’re just playing the game.”