Are you ready? Excited? A little distracted during your workweek thinking about it? It's Kentucky soccer, of course you are!

Tomorrow night at 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Kentucky heads to the Barbary Coast of Tennessee, Johnson City, to take on the East Tennessee State University Buccaneers. ETSU soccer has only been around since 2008, and is apparently within a misguided treasure hunt of a couple of privateer-infested lakes in north eastern Tennessee.

As an aside, Wikipedia, ever infallible, notes that Johnson City's nickname is actually "Little Chicago," (again, lakes), and is so famous as to have been mentioned in not one but TWO country-ish music songs, Travis Tritt's "Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde" and Old Crow Medicine Show's "Wagon Wheel." I would point out that Tritt's ditty is so kind to Tennessee's Spanish Main as to point out its fine truck stops and robber gypsies. Quite the endorsement.

Moving on, ETSU, not to be confused with hipster homemade goods behemoth Etsy, "narrowly" lost 1-0 at South Carolina last week in their season opener. I hope I'm not the first to tell you, but a 1-0 loss isn't always narrow just because a single goal decided the game. One goal decides lots of games. Most, actually. However, when you're the SID of an athletic department for a directional state school in the heart of Appalachia whose nickname is apropos of nothing, sometimes you just gotta sell drinking fountain watered down pirate rum, ya know?

Just because their mascot has absolutely nothing to do with their geographic location whatsoever doesn't mean there's reason to think that the Buccos aren't a tropical depression to be reckoned with. The Land Pirates return six seniors to a squad that went 10-6-4 last season while amassing a pretty impressive GF total. That said, Kentucky pretty well thrashed them 3-0 in Lexington back in October, so maybe the level of competition left something to be desired.

Go Cats! Beat the Buccaneers of Boone Lake and the Nolichucky River!