John Calipari and Rick Pitino have stood the test of time, just not together

The Athletic has live coverage of 2025 Men’s March Madness PROVIDENCE, R.I. — Because time measures history even as it moves on from it, and because college basketball remains perpetually dictated by larger-than-life coaches with enormous levels of power, money and personality, the latest chapter in a relationship that is not, in fact, a relationship, is going to play out here on Saturday with great anticipation. Rick Pitino, coaching the St. John’s Red Storm, and John Calipari, coaching the Arkansas Razorbacks, will go head-to-head for the 24th time in a college game. I don’t know a whole lot about him except he’s a terrific basketball coach.” Rick Pitino doesn’t know a lot about John Calipari? The English author once wrote, “When we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.” Calipari and Pitino have known each other since working at Howard Garfinkel’s famed Five-Star Basketball Camp in the Pocono Mountains outside Scranton, Pa. Pitino, the older of the two, was a counselor in the ’70s when Calipari was a player. “They’re both outgoing, big personalities, big talkers,” said Boeheim, the Hall of Fame Syracuse coach who hired Pitino as an assistant in 1976 and has known both for the better part of 40 years.