PROVIDENCE, R.I. — John Calipari and Rick Pitino aren’t close.
They are not enemies, but not friends. They publicly say they don't loathe each other, but one could assume they don't love each other, either.
No dinners. No wine. They don’t break bread or meet for breakfast prior to basketball games.
“We’re both Italian. We both love the game,” Pitino said. “I think that’s pretty much where the similarities end.”
Part of that comes with their previous positions at Louisville and Kentucky. Not only did the programs play each season, but the Wildcats eliminated the Cardinals at the 2012 Final Four and in the second round of the 2014 NCAA Tournament.
“You’re not going to be friends when you’ve got those two jobs,” Calipari said.
They now meet in Calipari’s first season with Arkansas and Pitino’s second with St. John’s.
“We both have big noses,” Calipari said. “We’re all going to be judged 50 years from now: What we did, how we did it. My hope is people look and say, ‘They both get their teams to play really hard.'”
One way or another, their paths continue to cross. The next chapter of the “Rigatoni Marinara Classic,” as ESPN’s Dick Vitale put it on social media, comes as the Razorbacks meet the Red Storm at the NCAA Tournament second round at 1:40 p.m. Central on Saturday at Amica Mutual Pavilion.
Tenth-seeded Arkansas defeated seventh-seeded Kansas 79-72, and second-seeded St. John’s defeated 15th-seeded Omaha 83-53 on Thursday.
The winner of Saturday’s bout will play either 11th-seeded Drake or third-seeded Texas Tech at the West Regional in San Francisco next week.
It will be the 24th meeting between Calipari and Pitino, and the first at their respective new schools. Calipari leads the series 13-10, but their shared history goes beyond their duels at Kentucky and Louisville. They dueled when Calipari-coached Memphis dueled Louisville in Conference USA.
Their paths began as coaching protegees under Howard Garfinkel at 5 Star basketball camp. Before AAU basketball and recruiting websites, there was 5 Star, where the top collegiate prospects from across the country descended upon Honesdale, Pa., to compete and show their worth.
Calipari was a camper when Pitino was a counselor. When Calipari became a counselor, Pitino rose to be a speaker.
“I’ve always looked up to him,” Calipari said. “Everywhere he’s been, he’s made a difference. I will study what he’s doing; I always do, watch what he’s doing, how he’s doing it.”
Pitino, a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, endorsed Calipari for the job when he was hired there. The Minutemen were in “dire straits,” Pitino said, with a limited budget and a floundering coaching salary,
“I thought John was the one guy that could resurrect the program,” Pitino said.
Calipari took the Minutemen to a Final Four and to the No. 1 ranking during his tenure in Amherst — something Pitino didn’t think was possible.
“It was a remarkable thing,” Pitino said. “I have always said there's three programs I always remember that just went from nothing to the top, and that was [Jerry Tarkanian at UNLV], Jim Calhoun at Connecticut and John at UMass.”
Their head-to-head matchups have garnered media attention and hype ever since, beginning with Pitino’s wins with Kentucky over UMass at the 1992 Sweet 16 and 1996 Final Four.
They are tied 2-2 in meetings in the NCAA Tournament.
They met six times in the NBA when Calipari coached the New Jersey Nets and Pitino led the Boston Celtics. The rest of their history comes in the collegiate ranks, where they will meet Saturday for a chance at the Sweet 16.
Arkansas will be the underdog, with KenPom giving it a 28% chance to win, and St. John’s will likely have a home-court advantage with the contest being played a relatively short drive from its New York campus. Both defenses are stout, and both offenses have been clicking more of late.
Saturday will likely be a physical game from tip to buzzer, with the spoils likely going to the team with fewer turnovers and better half-court execution.
“They switch a lot. They're really physical, they collapse, they make layups hard,” Calipari said. “And then their defense leads to their offense.”
Most of the decorated history Calipari and Pitino share, from the titles to the Hall of Fame honors, came before most of the players taking the floor were born.
“We see a little bit of the stuff on media and stuff,” St. John’s guard Simeon Wilcher said, “but we don't really dive too much into it.”
Calipari and Pitino are good for storylines and TV. They are also good for the sidelines and for college basketball.
Their intertwined paths, with their similarities and differences, have led to March again.
“He's on Chapter 2 of his new book and we're on Chapter 1,” Calipari said. “It's both of us writing another story and being able to come back here.”