Calipari bests Pitino in March Madness and leads Arkansas to sweetest Sweet 16 appearance yet

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — John Calipari is heading back to the Sweet 16 after sending a second straight Hall of Famer home from the NCAA Tournament’s “Region of Coaches.”

One game after knocking out good friend Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks, Calipari's 10th-seeded Arkansas Razorbacks beat longtime nemesis Rick Pitino and St. John's 75-66 on Saturday.

That earned Calipari an especially sweet 16th trip to the Sweet 16, with his fourth school. And, perhaps more deliciously, it ended Pitino's chances of a long March Madness run with his second-seeded Red Storm.

“Rick did a great job with his team all year,” Calipari said. “If they made a few shots, they would probably beat us. We were fortunate to get out.”

Pitino and Calipari have crossed paths for almost 50 years, with a rivalry that peaked when Calipari was at Kentucky, where Pitino had won an NCAA title, and Pitino was down the road in Louisville. Although the two Hall of Famers insist they have no ill will toward one another, they are most definitely not friends.

The coaches shared a polite pregame handshake and met at center court when it was over, with the Arkansas’ fans chants of “Wooo pig sooie!” finally heard over the Pitino-loving crowd.

“They outplayed us. They deserve to move on and we don’t,” Pitino said. “That’s what March Madness is all about. No matter how good a regular season you have, you play this way, you’re going to get beat.”

The scoreboard: Calipari is 17-13 against Pitino, including the six NBA matchups they split. Cal is now 3-2 against his elder in the NCAA Tournament; in fact, the Arkansas coach entered this year's brackets with 56 March Madness wins, tied for the most among active coaches with Michigan State's Tom Izzo. Both are still in the field.

Calipari has now taken UMass, Memphis, Kentucky and Arkansas to the Sweet 16. Pitino made it with Providence, Kentucky and Louisville, but never got out of the first weekend with Boston University, Iona or — so far — St. John's.

But Pitino has two national championships — with Kentucky and Louisville — to one for Calipari.

“You know, he’s on Chapter 2 of his new book and we’re on Chapter 1,” Calipari said this week. “As a matter of fact, we’re probably on the first few pages of the chapter. It’s both of us writing another story and being able to come back here.”

Calipari led the Wildcats to the 2012 national title — 16 years after Pitino won in Lexington — but after a five-year span in which the Wildcats won just one March Madness game, he defected to Arkansas to start fresh.

Beset by early injuries, the Razorbacks lost their first five games in an unprecedentedly deep Southeastern Conference before earning their way into the NCAA Tournament after missing just one year.

“We had a long, up-and-down season,” said Arkansas freshman Billy Richmond III, who scored 16 points on Saturday. “We all came together, put our egos to the side and became one heartbeat.”

Calipari tried to get in good with the fans in Providence by talking about all the Italian restaurants he's hit on Federal Hill — " under the pineapple," in the local parlance. But that was a losing battle this weekend: Whatever split there might be in Kentucky over their popularity, Providence is all Pitino.

The 72-year-old New Yorker remains beloved in the city where he led the Friars to the 1987 Final Four. He continued to vacation in tony Newport for years, even as he climbed the coaching ladder, slid to the bottom, and started his way back up again.

Although Arkansas led most of the game, the Pitino fans outshouted the Razorback backers, rising to a thunderous cheer when Zuby Ejiofor responded to a flagrant foul with a rim-shaking dunk. Big East Player of the Year RJ Luis Jr. followed with a steal and a dunk of his own to tie it 24-all, and the crowd sent St. John’s into a timeout with a chant of “Let’s go, Johnnies!”

Arkansas led by as many as 13 in the second half and still had an eight-point edge before the Johnnies cut it to 62-60 with 6:11 to play. But Pitino, who has built his career on full-court defense and 3-point shooting, could only summon one of them when he needed it.

St. John’s shot 2 for 22 from 3-point range — Arkansas was barely better, at 2 for 19 — and the Red Storm missed six straight from beyond the arc in the final minutes.

“We thought we were championship-driven in our minds, but I have been disappointed before with this," Pitino said. “I don’t mind going out with a loss, I just hate to see us play that way offensively. It’s just a bitter pill to swallow with that type of performance.”

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