More than a warm front, a stiff drink or a white Christmas, Kentucky’s 72-60 win over Indiana on Saturday night was just what the Wildcats needed.

How’s this for a resumption of the rivalry? No. 11 Louisville beat Memphis 99-73, the second-largest margin in the 91-game history of the series.

The banners already hang in the rafters. But Saturday afternoon, Louisville will pause to honor one man whose quiet excellence helped make them possible. And one team that helped gather the momentum.

When Kentucky and Louisville limp into Saturday’s annual rivalry finale in L&N Stadium, the story isn’t just bragging rights, it’s bandwidth. Both teams have depleted rosters. This game is about who has the most left, on the roster and in the tank.

All four scholarship running backs are out with injuries heading into Saturday’s noon rivalry showdown with Kentucky.

Curt Cignetti has an unbeaten football team, a No. 2 national ranking, and a ticket to the Big Ten Championship on the line. But in the run-up to the 128th meeting between Indiana and Purdue, if you think he’s talking about any of that, you haven’t been paying attention.

The old rivals stumble in like a pair of bar brawlers who forgot what they were fighting about.

Somewhere between the seven-and-a-half-minute shooting drought and Mikel Brown’s rim-rattling redemption, between the grunts and groans of another old-school scrap with Cincinnati, Louisville found something.

It took the No. 6-ranked Louisville basketball team a minute to acclimate. Actually, it took them 7 1/2 minutes to acclimate. That’s how long it took the Cardinals to score their first basket in this 101st renewal of the school’s most-played rivalry.