Calipari, Kentucky steal momentum from Louisville

LEXINGTON, Ky. (AP)—There’s a joke Rick Pitino likes to trot out when describing the difference between coaching at Louisville and coaching at Kentucky.

When you’re the coach at Kentucky, Pitino says, you’re with 100 percent of your friends. When you’re the coach at Louisville, you’re with 52 percent of your friends and 48 percent of your enemies.

Cue the rimshot.

It gets a good laugh more often than not, regardless of the audience for the only coach to lead both schools to a Final Four.

Yet these days, Louisville’s advantage in the state’s largest city is more tenuous than ever, and the inroads the Cardinals have made in the Bluegrass during Pitino’s watch are in danger of being erased.

Open a magazine. Turn on a television. Flip on the radio. Browse the Internet.

On the eve of the most anticipated season in one of the most basketball-crazed states in the country, it’s hard to tell which school is coming off consecutive appearances in the NCAA tournament regional finals and which school fired its coach after limping into the NIT.

“Kentucky is all you hear about,” said Louisville guard Edgar Sosa. “I’m from New York, and all my people from back home, they just want to know about Kentucky, what’s going on with Kentucky.”

Louisville’s fight for respect throughout the Commonwealth has been going on since the days of Adolph Rupp and Wes Unseld. Yet never has momentum seemed to swing so suddenly from one side to the other without so much as a basket being scored.

Blame it on a perfect storm hard to imagine six months ago, when Kentucky was foundering as the Cardinals soared to the Big East championship in a season that included a second straight win over the Wildcats.

The plates started shifting in late March. The Wildcats fired Billy Gillispie the same night Louisville beat Arizona in the regional semifinals.

The Cardinals were upset by Michigan State two days later. The following week the Wildcats lured John Calipari away from Memphis with a contract that made him the highest paid coach in the country, breathing life into a program that spent the last decade slowly slipping off its lofty perch atop the college basketball world.

Shortly thereafter Pitino came forward and acknowledged he was working with the FBI to investigate an extortion attempt against him, a drama which played out all summer long and culminated with Pitino’s painful admission that he had a sexual encounter at a Louisville restaurant six years ago with the woman later accused of attempting to blackmail him.

Pitino kept a decidedly low profile all summer while the details slowly emerged, leaving a vacuum Calipari was only too happy to fill.

“Coach Cal is like magic,” said former Kentucky coach Joe B. Hall. “And what he has done, I don’t know what you’d compare it to. Maybe if Bear Bryant came back to life.”

Maybe, but the college football legend would need a primer on Twitter. Not Calipari.

The coach who brags about not having a computer in his office has gleefully invaded the Internet. He Tweets. He Facebooks. He generates money for charity through his Web site, which hawks everything from his latest self-help book to a DVD on how to coach the “dribble-drive” offense.

“Coach Calipari seems to have an aura of success that is certainly stirring fans up. And people are looking forward to this season with more anticipation than I’ve seen in a long time,” said Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear.

There hasn’t been a holler or corner of the state Calipari has missed since the Wildcats made him the highest paid coach in college basketball in April. He’s dropped into the depths of a coal mine, glad-handed alongside the state’s top politicians and wooed one of college basketball’s most fervent fan bases with an energy that belies a coach who just turned 50.

“He’s like a god,” said Kentucky junior forward Patrick Patterson.

One that can do no wrong in the eyes of the Commonwealth. There has been little backlash to the NCAA’s findings that Calipari’s 2008 Memphis team, which lost to Kansas in the national title game, used an ineligible player and stripped the team of its NCAA-record 38 wins.

And when the NCAA ruled star freshman guard John Wall must sit out two games for accepting illegal benefits from his AAU coach, everyone from Calipari to the players to the administration shrugged its shoulders.

It helps that he knows how to put on a good show. Calipari turned Kentucky’s annual Big Blue Madness into a show complete with a stage and a cameo appearance by budding rap star Drake.

The practice came on the heels of a night Calipari spent camping out with hundreds of fans for tickets to the season’s kickoff event. He even worked with Papa John’s—a major sponsor of Louisville athletics—to deliver pizzas.

Things were much quieter 70 miles to the west in Louisville, where the Cardinals opened practice with a grueling two hours of drills at the Yum! Center in front of Pitino, his staff and nobody else.

“We used that time to get better,” said Sosa. “This is what we signed up for when we come to Louisville. We’re all about business.”

Though both coaches have taken the high road while talking about each other and claim there is no rivalry. Pitino, who played a role in Calipari’s hire at Massachusetts in 1988, has refused to talk openly about Calipari’s reception, one that rivals the overwhelming wave Pitino received when he was brought in to rescued the probation-ravaged program in 1989.

“I just want to talk about Louisville,” Pitino said.

So does Calipari, who has made no secret his desire to take over the entire state, the home of Kentucky’s archrival included.

He raised more than a few eyebrows when word leaked out about a preseason practice at Freedom Hall, Louisville’s home floor. The practice was canceled due to excessive media coverage, though it certainly got Louisville’s attention.

“We were like ‘what?”’ Sosa said. “It’s something we dislike, but we can’t control.”

When the Cardinals leave the unique but dated facility for a sparkling downtown arena next fall, Calipari plans to invade. He’s already measuring the drapes, telling a crowd recently he wanted to paint Freedom Hall blue.

It’s not personal, he claims, just business.

“We want people behind our bench,” Calipari said. “We want the business leaders of the state, maybe from Louisville, to come and be a part of what we’re doing. (Louisville) is vital to the city, which is vital to this state. I will do nothing to hurt them, but try to beat their brains in when we play them.”

Nothing else will do for fans of Big Blue when they collide at Rupp Arena on Jan. 2, even if the expectations around the program has gotten a little out of hand, even by Kentucky standards.

“How much does hype mean?” Hall said. “It doesn’t mean anything until you play the game.”

Perhaps, but the experts have already weighed in. The Wildcats are No. 4 in AP preseason poll; Louisville is No.19. Kentucky’s freshman class, led by Wall, was rated tops in the country by Scout.com; Louisville’s was 21st.

The players stress there is respect on both sides, though the constant chatter among the fans can get tiresome. Louisville guard Preston Knowles, who grew up in Winchester, Ky., a few 3-pointers away from Rupp Arena, has come up with a pretty good way to bring Kentucky fans down a notch.

“Last time I checked I was undefeated against UK and that shuts them up,” he said.

A rare moment of silence in a rivalry that only figures to get louder.

AP Sports Writer John Zenor in Birmingham, Ala., and Associated Press writer Joe Biesk in Frankfort, Ky., contributed to this report.