In Bill Self's ideal world, the biggest game of the weekend -- and one of the most hype-able, brand-name nonconference games of the 2016-17 season -- wouldn't be happening. Or, at the very least, wouldn't be happening now.

Just minutes after his team's 85-69 loss at West Virginia on Tuesday, after he had detailed the various reasons why the Mountaineers ended the No. 2 Jayhawks' 18-game winning streak, Self was asked about the "magnitude" of Saturday's trip to Rupp Arena.

"I think it's good for TV," he replied. "There's not one coach that's playing Saturday out of the SEC or the Big 12 that would say it's a well-scheduled game. At least I don't think so."

He's not wrong. Even worse? The Jayhawks' stakes are low. If they lose? Oh well. There's no shame in a loss in Lexington, Kentucky. If they win? Great! They're one step closer to a No. 1 seed ... that they may well have ended up with anyway. Meanwhile Kentucky is coming off an upset loss to Tennessee and will be determined not to lose its second elite home fixture of the season (a Dec. 3 loss to UCLA) and, given the state of the SEC, won't get another résumé-building opportunity anywhere near this good the rest of the season.

Kentucky coach John Calipari gets it: A year ago, when Kentucky went to Kansas, and the Wildcats were in a similar position, a Kansas fan who ran into the coach in Lawrence asked Calipari if he "was ready to take that L?" Calipari's response, grinning ear to ear: "Yeah, we probably will." Shrug. That's just how it goes.

And you know what? We don't care. Not even a little bit. Those are the trees. Here's the forest: Kansas is playing at Kentucky. In late January. Come on. It's going to be awesome.

Forget the nitty-gritty of stakes and schedule and eventual NCAA tournament seeding. Set aside the relative merits of leaguewide television exposure and audience engagement. However Kansas ended up playing a true road game at Kentucky in the last few days before the calendar ticks over into February, the fact of the matter is, it is happening. Whatever inconvenience this causes the teams involved is surely outweighed by the sheer radness of the result. Even the two teams' road losses Tuesday night didn't do much to diminish the excitement. Does anyone think these two teams aren't still among the best, oh, five or six in the country?

More specifically: Has any game this season put two better backcourts on the same floor at the same time?

Kentucky somehow lost Tyler Ulis and Jamal Murray and arguably got better at the guard spot. This is a crazy thing to say -- it was often difficult to decide whether Ulis or Murray was actually the Wildcats' best player, because both were so good -- and yet here we are. Malik Monk is one of the best freshman scorers in Wildcats history, shooting 59.6 percent from 2, 39.9 percent from 3 (on 153 attempts already), and 82.9 percent from the free throw line while accounting for 30.5 percent of the Wildcats' attempts while on the floor; his 47-point explosion against North Carolina remains the signature performance of the season. (Monk is one of those players whose actual ability is sold a little bit short by television; seeing his smooth effortlessness in person is a revelation.) De'Aaron Fox, meanwhile, is basically Basketball Usain Bolt ... provided Bolt could maintain his speed while attacking transition defenses, distributing and finishing, without turning the ball over. (He probably can't.) Throw in a more efficient edition of the Isaiah Briscoe bowling-ball experience, and there isn't much the Wildcats' backcourt can't do.

Kansas guard Frank Mason III is averaging his highest totals for points, rebounds and assists in his four years with the Jayhawks. Jamie Squire/Getty Images

The same goes for Kansas, of course, where Frank Mason III -- with the exception of Tuesday's relative off night at West Virginia -- is having the best season of the bunch. After shooting 45.4 percent from 2 and 38.2 from 3 a season ago, Mason is hitting 50.3 percent and 52.8, respectively, at a pace that will likely exceed his overall attempts from a season ago. (This is really hard to do.) Devonte' Graham's junior season has been a roaring success in just about every way, Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk has adjusted to greatly increased minutes and touches incredibly well, and freshman blue-chipper Josh Jackson -- despite early struggles shooting from 3 (and he went 4-of-4 at WVU, worth noting) and occasional turnover issues -- can conjure brilliance at a moment's notice.

Oh, and both teams play fast. Kansas plays Kansas-fast, hunting transition opportunities and second breaks at the same rough rate Self's teams always do. Kentucky plays fast unlike a Calipari-coached UK team ever has. The Jayhawks' average possession, per KenPom.com, lasts 15.8 seconds; the Wildcats' takes a whopping 14.3. The Jayhawks average 1.21 points per possession in transition, per Synergy scouting data; the Wildcats get 1.16.

This will not be a slow affair. It will not be a defensive grind. It will be fast, open and brimming with talent. It is almost guaranteed to be fun.

For some more than others? Sure. But even Self -- whose focus is not on aesthetic entertainment but on winning a national title, whose quest for a 13th straight Big 12 title (and a particularly brutal stretch of schedule therein) is being rudely interrupted by a sojourn to one of the nation's least hospitable venues, whose focus had to suddenly shift after his team's first loss in months Tuesday night -- couldn't help but mix a little bit of anticipation into his lament.

"We're happy to go, we're excited," he said. "I mean, we'll go there and let it ride."

No. 12 Virginia at No. 1 Villanova, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET, Fox

Speaking of awesome, randomly scheduled nonconference games in late January, eh? Last season, the Wildcats went to Charlottesville, Virginia, and found themselves unable to keep pace with a Cavaliers team that began the season playing elite offense but hadn't yet sanded itself into the merciless defensive obelisk it would become. The reverse is true this season: Virginia is one of the nation's best defenses but ranks just sixth in points per trip in ACC play thus far.

Villanova -- even after its loss at Marquette on Tuesday -- is still playing top-five offense, led by Josh Hart, still the player of the 2016-17 season thus far. Yet as Tuesday proved, coach Jay Wright's team isn't quite the lockdown defensive unit it was a season ago. That makes this a strength-on-strength game of the highest order between teams that, like Kansas and Kentucky, probably both deserve a spot on any short list of the nation's best teams. And while there are other games to keep an eye on this weekend -- the rest of the Big 12-SEC Challenge, a batch of ranked ACC teams (Duke, North Carolina, Florida State) going on the road -- nothing approaches the weekend's best two.