Calipari vs. Pitino: They’re neck and neck in win percentage at Kentucky
John Calipari went into the Tennessee game two victories shy of tying Joe B. Hall as the second-winningest Kentucky coach. But there’s another former UK coach who should be part of this story.
Rick Pitino and Calipari have almost identical winning percentages as UK coaches. You have to go to the right of the decimal point — likely to a hundredths or thousandths of a percentage point in another week or so — to separate their rates of victory.
Pitino, who was UK coach from 1989-90 through 1996-97, had a record of 219-50. Kentucky won 81.4 percent of his games.
Meanwhile, Tuesday’s loss to LSU lowered Calipari’s winning percentage to 81.3. His record was 295-68 going into the Tennessee game.
“When I think of Pitino and Cal nose to nose, I think of (Muhammad) Ali and (Joe) Frazier,” said Fran Fraschilla, an ESPN analyst and longtime friend of Calipari. “Too bad it looks like there will never be a rematch.”
Of course, Pitino lost his job at Louisville in the wake of more than one scandal. He is coaching a professional team in Greece.
“Those of us who go back years and years know there was a point in time where John wanted to be Rick,” Fraschilla said. “We all looked up to Rick because he was successful at an early stage of his career.”
Fraschilla suggested that familiarity played a part in the perceived strain in the Calipari-Pitino relationship. Opposites might attract, but they proved that similarities can repel.
Each was connected to the famed Five-Star Basketball camp. Each was of Italian heritage. Each was a nondescript player. Neither had the advantage of a link to a famed coach.
“Just grind-your-way-to-the-top roots,” Fraschilla said. “Neither one was born with a silver basketball spoon in his mouth.
“There was a lot of similarities there. Probably so much so that competitively it was bound to be a point where it turned out to be who’s the king of the jungle, so to speak.”
During a book tour that brought him to Lexington last year, author Michael Sokolove suggested that there are telling differences between Calipari and Pitino. Sokolove was in Lexington to promote his book “The Last Temptation of Rick Pitino: A Story of Corruption, Scandal and the Big Business of College Basketball.”
In the book, former U of L trustee Jonathan Blue spoke of Pitino’s “Sinatra-like entourage.” To which Sokolove said, “You know, Rick Pitino is a creature of the night. And Cal is someone who has a persona of having Drake around. … But the truth about Cal is he’s a little bit of a square. He’s not a creature of the night. He goes home and goes to bed relatively early. And I think, personally, they’re two very different people.”
Spreading the blame
When asked about LSU’s winning tip-in (or example of basket interference, if you prefer), longtime referee Don Rutledge declined to pass judgment. But …
“My point is why does everyone want to blame the referees?” he said. “Why don’t they ask, ‘Why didn’t the guy block out the guy that tipped it in?’ …
“The press and everybody (complains) about the referees all the time. It’s easy to blame the referees. They never blame players because they want the players to come to their school. They never blame the coach because they like their coach because he’s winning.”
Slows game down?
Don Rutledge does not find convincing the usual argument against adding judgment calls like goaltending/basket interference to the plays that can be reviewed.
“The cry from the press and TV people and everybody else is, ‘We can’t have that many replays because it slows down the game,’” he said. “And yet when you don’t have one and there’s a questionable call, (they say) ‘Why didn’t you review it?’”
Good questions
NCAA rules allowed a review to see if any time should be put on the clock after the LSU tip-in. But the referees could not review the judgment that no basket interference occurred.
“They went to review something they could review,” Don Rutledge said. “Why couldn’t they review something else?”
Rutledge raised another question in offering his opinion that a judgment call on goaltending or basket interference should be reviewable at any point of a game.
“Why doesn’t the NCAA allow you to do that?” he said. “Because what is different between that play happening (at the end of games) and a play happening five minutes earlier that’s deciding the game the same way?”
Review NBA-style
If UK-LSU had been an NBA game, the referees could have reviewed the winning tip-in by Kavell Bigby-Williams.
“Trigger 13” of the NBA rules on reviews covers goaltending and basket interference. Such a review can be done if “officials are not reasonably certain whether a goaltending or basket interference violation was correctly called,” the NBA rules say.
Such reviews — which are done by officials in the “NBA Replay Center” — can only be done in the final two minutes of the fourth quarter and/or any overtime period. This rule went into effect in the 2012-13 season.
‘In God’s hands’
LSU guard Tremont Waters said he was unconcerned as the referees reviewed whether time should be put on the clock following Kavell Bigby-Williams’ tip-in.
“I leave everything in God’s hands,” Waters said.
When told of this reference to divine justice, longtime SEC referee John Clougherty said, “Let me tell you, young man, God has nothing to do with this play. God has got more important things going on than this basket interference.”
Body language
During the first half of Kentucky’s game at Mississippi State last weekend, John Calipari protested that Aric Holman walked before dunking. The referee, I believe it was Don Daily, stood nearby with his hands in his pockets as Calipari made his case.
A question came to mind: Do hands in pockets say something in body language?
Here’s what the website 2knowmyself.com had to say: “The subconscious mind, which thinks in a primitive way, believes that putting your hands in your pockets is a good way to hide and to avoid the situation.”
The website Nicolasfradet.com put it this way: “Pocketed hands indicate unwillingness, mistrust and reluctance. If a person keeps his hands in his pockets, you will need to first gain his interest as well as his trust.”
Not a finalist
Ashton Hagans is not a finalist for the Bob Cousy Award, which goes to the nation’s best point guard.
John Calipari used sarcasm to make light of Hagans’ exclusion. “I wasn’t either when I was in college,” he said. “And I was so upset with that. It bothered me for about three years.”
No more streaks
Against LSU on Tuesday, Kentucky was seeking to win a 10th straight SEC game. That would have marked UK’s longest such streak in a single season since going 18-0 in 2014-15.
An 11th straight victory overall would have marked the 16th time in John Calipari’s coaching career his teams won 11 or more straight games.
It would have been the fifth time a Calipari-coached UK team won 11 straight. Kentucky won 38 straight to begin the 2014-15 season, 24 in a row in 2011-12, 19 straight to start the 2009-10 season and 14 in a row in 2016-17.
Of course, LSU won 73-71.
Numbers
Guard Tremont Waters said LSU drew motivation from being considered a decided underdog at Kentucky. For instance, human calculator Ken Pomeroy said that LSU had a 22-percent chance of winning.
“I don’t think it’s about numbers,” Waters said after LSU won. “It’s about who you got on your team.”
However, LSU Coach Will Wade relies on analytics.
“We develop our game plan around what the numbers say,” he said before the game. “And sometimes we need to adjust during the course of the game when guys are doing stuff outside their normal realm.”
When asked if he used analytics to an unusual degree, Wade said, “I think everybody uses it to some extent. We’re probably an outlier in terms of how much we use it and how much we go by it.”
Happy birthday
To Ray Edelman. He turned 67 on Thursday. … To Tod Lanter. He turned 28 on Friday. … To Al Robinson. He turns 81 on Sunday (today). … To Jarvis Walker. He turns 32 on Tuesday.
This story was originally published February 15, 2019 at 1:44 PM.