March Madness: St. John's Rick Pitino and Arkansas' John Calipari have a rich on-court history . . . but they aren't close
Louisville head coach Rick Pitino and Kentucky head coach John Calipari, right, talk before a game at KFC YUM! Center in Louisville, Kentucky, on Dec. 21, 2016. Credit: TNS/Andy Lyons
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — For the better part of four decades, Rick Pitino and John Calipari have been synonymous with college basketball success.
Pitino, 72, has won two national championships — at Kentucky in 1996 and Louisville in 2013 — and has been to seven Final Fours. Calipari, 66, won a national title at Kentucky in 2012 and has reached six Final Fours.
The Naismith Hall of Famers have met 29 times, 23 at the collegiate level and six in the NBA during the late 1990s. Calipari holds a 13-10 edge over Pitino in a college series that included heated rivalry matchups between the former’s Kentucky team and the latter’s Louisville program in the 2010s. They went 3-3 against each other in the pros, Calipari coaching the Nets and Pitino leading the Celtics.
Pitino is first among active coaches with 885 wins. Calipari is second with 876.
Both are amid new — and perhaps final — chapters of their coaching careers. Pitino is in his second season leading St. John’s and Calipari is in his first at Arkansas.
The basketball icons are set to meet again as No. 2 St. John’s (31-4) and No. 10 Arkansas (21-13) will play in a West Region second-round game Saturday afternoon at Amica Mutual Pavilion. It will be their fifth NCAA Tournament meeting and the first that came earlier than the Sweet 16.
“I certainly have great respect for him, but we’re not really close,” Pitino said Friday. “Everybody tried to talk that way. It was just a Kentucky-Louisville and Louisville-Memphis thing. We don’t know each other’s wives. We don’t know each other’s children. We’re not really close friends . . . I don’t know a whole lot about him except he’s a terrific basketball coach.
“At a very young age, I knew him really well. When he was living in Coraopolis [Pennsylvania], playing in Moon Township, I knew him very well back then. But years have gone by, and I don’t think we have been to dinner one time in our lifetime.
“We’re both Italian. We both love the game. I think that’s pretty much where the similarities end.”
Said Calipari: “I respect coaches that can really do this well. And if you can do it over a long, long period of time, I really respect you . . . With all that goes on with what we do — to sustain excellence means you’re really, really good at what you do. You’re great at what you do. Maybe you’re one of the best to ever do it.”
The series between the two began on Dec. 4, 1991, a 90-69 win for Pitino’s Kentucky team over Massachusetts. Pitino went 4-1 in five matchups against Calipari’s Minutemen, including wins in the 1992 Sweet 16 and the 1996 Final Four.
When Pitino started at Louisville and Calipari at Memphis in the early 2000s, they split eight games as Conference USA foes. Calipari beat Pitino for his 300th win on Feb. 9, 2005, and Pitino beat Calipari in the CUSA Tournament final on March 12, 2005.
They would not meet again until the 2009-10 season, the first of 10 matchups in eight seasons between Pitino-led Louisville and Calipari-led Kentucky. Pitino went 2-8 and lost to Kentucky in the 2012 Final Four and the 2014 Sweet 16.
Though the history runs deep, it does not necessarily resonate with the players.
“I don’t know a lot,” Zuby Ejiofor said. “I do see some photos or such on social media of their younger days, I would say, but I don’t know too much. But Coach P doesn’t say a whole lot about the head-to-head matchups or anything like that. He just talks about the team and what they bring to the table and such.”
St. John’s preparation for Arkansas began with a film session after its first-round win over Omaha, which ended right after midnight Friday. Pitino said he called it a night at about 3:45 a.m.
While the coaches will add another marker in their history, St. John’s is focused on its own story. The Red Storm are a win away from their first Sweet 16 berth since 1999.
Notes & quotes: Arkansas leading scorer Adou Thiero (knee) has missed the last seven games. Calipari said Thiero “was out there” at practice Friday but did not sound optimistic. “The kid will try to convince me, but you got to be able to go in and help.” . . . Simeon Wilcher’s older brother, CJ Wilcher, plays for Texas A&M. Their mother traveled to Providence to see Simeon and their dad is in Denver following CJ. Said Wilcher: “It’s something that we’ve both dreamed about doing since we were younger, and I can’t even tell you how my parents feel because it’s hard for them to break it into words, too.”
Ben Dickson joined Newsday’s high school sports staff in 2023 after graduating from Maryland, where he covered several of the Terrapins' teams.
