Calipari, Pitino aren’t friends but respect obvious at NCAA Tournament

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Pitino and Calipari face off in March Madness battle of coaching greats

Mackenzie Salmon takes a look at the best games to watch on the first day of second round action in the NCAA Tournament including a battle of coaching legends.

Sports Seriously

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Rick Pitino has matched wits with Mike Krzyzewski and Dean Smith, with John Thompson and Jim Boeheim, with Roy Williams, Lute Olson and more, but the only coach he has seen as a true rival — a “disliking-each-other rival,” in his words — is Jim Calhoun, a bitter nemesis during Pitino’s stints at Boston University and Providence.

When Calhoun was at Northeastern, the Terriers’ crosstown adversary, the two would shoot daggers at one another in front of crowds numbering in the hundreds, Pitino recalled. This rancor continued when the pair migrated to the Big East, with Pitino taking both matchups during the 1986-87 Friars’ magical run to the Final Four.

“We hated each other at BU and Providence, hated each other,” Pitino said. “He goes on to coach at Connecticut, I go on to coach at Providence, and we hated each other there, as well.”

His relationship with Arkansas coach John Calipari is different, surprisingly, given the toe-to-toe battles during overlapping tenures at Louisville and Kentucky that often served as a referendum on regional and national supremacy.

Not good friends but not enemies, either, the Pitino and Calipari dynamic can be described as unenthusiastically respectful: not bitter or unkind but lacking the warmth and camaraderie that come with many connections in the coaching fraternity.

“I have always had great respect for John,” Pitino said. “You know, I certainly have great respect for him, but we’re not really close. Everybody tried to talk that way. It was just a Kentucky-Louisville and Louisville-Memphis thing. We don’t know each other’s wives or children. We’re not really close friends.”

Said Calipari, “I don’t know how long he was at Louisville when I was at Kentucky, but you’re not…

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Source link : https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaab/2025/03/22/rick-pitino-john-calipari-ncaa-bracket-st-johns-arkansas/82602461007/

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Publish date : 2025-03-22 09:10:00

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