MILWAUKEE — Bring it on, says Mark Pope.

Bring all the pressure. Bring all the critics. Bring all the controversies. Bring all the tough times and the tough matchups and the tough situations that are all part of what makes college athletics so special in the first place.

“Bring all the smoke” is the way the Kentucky basketball coach likes to put it.

And Sunday, they were just waiting to bring it.

After all, on Saturday afternoon Big Blue Nation watched its former coach and Pope’s predecessor, a fellow named John Calipari, lead No. 10 seed Arkansas to an upset win against No. 2 seed St. John’s and a spot in the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16. Saturday night, Pope’s BYU successor, a first-year head coach named Kevin Young, led the No. 6 seed Cougars to a Sweet 16 berth with an upset victory against No. 3 seed Wisconsin.

So could you imagine what the summer would have been like in all BBN precincts had No. 3 seed Kentucky lost to No. 6 seed Illinois on Saturday and fallen short of a Midwest Regional berth in Indianapolis?

You talk about all the smoke.

Ah, but Kentucky didn’t lose. Not only did it win 84-75, it smoked the Illini. The Cats trailed only once, 5-4 at the 16:43 mark of the first half. Kentucky led by as many as 16 points on the way to a Friday night Sweet 16 matchup with border rival Tennessee at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Get this: UK’s win against the Illini came with a twist. One of the nation’s best offensive teams, Kentucky beat Illinois with defense. Fourteen steals did the Cats commit, tying their season high. That led to 26 UK points.

“You can’t give a team 26 points off turnovers and expect to win the game,” Illinois coach Brad Underwood said. “You can’t do that.”

To a man, the Wildcats in the victorious postgame locker room credited the scouting report put together by Pope and his coaching staff. Freshman guard Collin Chandler said UK had not played a lot of switching defenses this season. The Cats did plenty of that in the 76-57 win over Troy in the first round on Friday. They did even more against an explosive Illinois offense.

The result: When Illinois wasn’t turning the ball over, it was missing 3-pointers. Underwood’s club launched 32 shots from beyond the arc. It made nine. That’s 28.1%. That’s also the way to find yourself packing up the balls and heading home for the summer.

Meanwhile, Kentucky is moving on, which was certainly no guarantee when the season began. You had a new coach. You had a new roster of players who were not only new to UK but new to each other. Only one was a 5-star recruit (Chandler) and he was returning from a two-year Mormon mission. Only one, Jaxson Robinson, had played for Pope before. And Robinson was lost for the season after a February wrist surgery.

A popular preseason take: If this Kentucky team could make it to the Sweet 16, it would be a successful season.

It says here that failing to reach the regional semifinal would not have stamped the season a disappointment. Pope did more than enough to make you believe even better years are waiting ahead, that he was the right choice to follow Coach Cal.

And yet, here they are. They battled through injuries. They battled through tough losses. They competed in possibly the strongest conference in the history of the sport. And Sunday, they played an Illinois team that despite being the lower seed was actually favored.

When the smoke cleared, there was Mark Pope and his Wildcats, still standing.

Bring it on, indeed.

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