Old school Saturday: Pitino vs. Calipari

Today's college basketball landscape can be almost unrecognizable to those who've followed the sport for a long time.

Stories of players getting paid to play used to be the stuff of rumor and scandal; now it's fact, the cost of doing business and recruiting talent. Good college players used to either enter the NBA draft or play out their careers with their first schools, but today they can roam the country like mercenaries, jumping to a different school for a better role, better payday, or both. Instead of just recruiting high schoolers, coaches need an entire scouting apparatus to evaluate potential college transfers.

To be clear: this is all to the good. Instead of being a multi-billion-dollar business in which the labor was largely unpaid, players now at least get a cut.

But still, amid all the change, it's nice to have a throwback occasion every now and then. For example, Rick Pitino against John Calipari in the NCAA Tournament. Just like The Way Things Used to Be.

Calipari's Arkansas team will meet Pitino and St. John's in the second round of the West Regional on Saturday afternoon. It'll be the 24th meeting between the two old lions who've won a combined 1,761 NCAA games, three national titles, and have 13 Final Four appearances between them. It's also their fifth meeting during March Madness, but the first game of any sort between the coaches since 2016.

They also might not like each other much. More on that in a bit.

The Calipari and Pitino journeys are almost freaky in their similarity. Pitino, 72, went to school at the University of Massachusetts and is said to have been on the search committee that recommended Calipari, 66, for the UMass job in 1988. One of the (possibly untrue) stories from that time was that Pitino gave his alma mater a $5,000 check to help bring Calipari on board.

Pitino was coaching in the NBA at time, but went back to college for the University of Kentucky job, where he won his first national title in 1996 - and beat Calipari's Massachusetts team in the Final Four.

Both men would leave for NBA head-coaching jobs at about the same time - Pitino with the Celtics and Calipari with the Nets - and both would basically flop in the pros. (Pitino's .466 NBA winning percentage gets the slight edge over Calipari's .391, but Calipari's .760 college mark squeaks by Pitino's .741.)

Eventually, they were back in college, but as conference rivals, with Calipari in Memphis and Pitino at Louisville. They later became state rivals, with Calipari moving to Kentucky, where he won the national title in 2012, which included a Final Four win over Pitino's Louisville. Pitino would get his second national title the following year.

If they were ever friendly, it doesn't seem to have survived the clashes over the decades, whether on court or for recruits.

In 2012, before that Final Four meeting, Calipari was asked about their relationship. "It's fine," he said. "We don't send each other Christmas cards, but if I see him in public and I'm recruiting, we'll spend some time. But it's fine."

That's not usually how people describe friendships.

Pitino was more recently asked about Calipari and said they've never disliked each other. They weren't even rivals that often, he said.

"The only time with John was when he was at Kentucky and I was at Louisville. It's normal. I've always had great respect for John."

Whatever the current state of their relationship, they'll meet Saturday more than a decade removed from their last national championships, and in charge of programs that haven't been among the best in the country for much longer than that. But they are coaches whose resumes carry weight all their own. Before this year's tournament began, Vice TV began airing two separate documentaries, one on Calipari's first season in Arkansas and one on Pitino's return to prominence with St. John's.

They're box office, in other words. In a sport undergoing its fair share of revolutions, the archetype of the all-powerful basketball coach isn't dead yet.

Pitino's Red Storm, the second seed in the West, had a shaky first half in the first round against No. 15 Omaha but pulled away with a 50-25 second half. The Johnnies are strong favorites over the Razorbacks, who pulled off a first-round upset of Kansas (and fellow longtime coaching warrior Bill Self.)

Before the tournament began, Pitino said a St. John's-Arkansas clash wouldn't be about the men on the sidelines.

"John doesn't have to worry about me," he said. "My jump shot is long gone. He's got to prepare for our team. We've got to prepare for his players."

But, still: How many more times will Calipari and Pitino meet in the NCAA Tournament? Possibly never. Which gives Saturday's meeting that little extra bit of weight. Their record against each other in the season-ending tournament? Two wins, two losses.

A rubber match 30-plus years in the making.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.