The final horn hadn’t even sounded when Rick Pitino started making his way off the court. He congratulated his archnemesis, John Calipari, and the Arkansas Razorbacks staff, then quickly hit the exit into an alcove after what was assuredly one of the most bitter defeats of his brilliant career. The rest of the St. John’s Red Storm trailed well behind their coach after going through the handshake line.
The scene outside the St. John’s locker room was funereal and confusing. Pitino’s top assistant coach, Steve Masiello, conversed quietly with program staffer Kenny Klein. Then Masiello pressed two fingers against the bridge of his nose, as if feeling the onset of a migraine, and leaned against a wall.
CBS reporter Evan Washburn stood nearby against a network backdrop, microphone in hand, as if waiting for an interview with Pitino, but there was no sign of him. Klein took two St. John’s players, Kadary Richmond and Zuby Ejiofor, and escorted them to a holding area for the postgame news conference.
Inside the locker room, the pall was palpable. Reporters clustered around RJ Luis Jr., the Big East Player of the Year, who quietly said he didn’t lead well enough. Luis went 3-for-17 from the field and Pitino benched him for the final five minutes—echoing self-defeating fits of pique the coach had with his star players in 1995 and 2009 Elite Eight losses. (Kentucky Wildcats guard Rodrick Rhodes took the brunt of the blame in the first of those; Louisville Cardinals guard Terrence Williams in the second.)
Pitino stayed out of sight until taking the podium for the postgame news conference, having changed out of his suit and into sweats. He gave Arkansas credit, deflected questions about benching Luis. (“You’re asking leading questions. Don’t ask me any questions. You already know why he didn’t play. … I’m not going to knock one of my players.”)
A man who always has taken losses extremely hard was steeped in the pain of defeat, and also regret. At age 72, he’d performed another in a long series of incredible coaching jobs with this team, winning 31 games, the Big East title and the league tournament. To go out like this, as a No. 2 seed at the hands of a No. 10 coached by a man Pitino despises—this was a gut punch.
“You hate to see us play like that,” Pitino said of the St. John’s train wreck, which included 28% shooting from the field and 9.1% from three-point range. “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.”
For Calipari, the taste of this victory was the sweetest he’s had in a decade. Not since taking an undefeated juggernaut to the 2015 Final Four while the coach at Kentucky has the 66-year-old done something this noteworthy. His act grew tired in Lexington, Ky., and he fled for a reboot at Arkansas that got off to a disastrously slow start—at one point the Hogs were 0–5 in the Southeastern Conference. Now they are rolling into the Sweet 16 and rekindling belief in Calipari’s coaching acumen.
“This is as rewarding a year as I have had based on how far we have come,” Calipari said.
Cal did it again to Rick. Their Vivaldi opera of a rivalry has played out publicly for more than three decades, with each man experiencing euphoric highs and devastating defeats against the other. But in recent times the rivalry has swung heavily in Cal’s favor. It has to gnaw away deep inside for Pitino—one of the biggest winners in college basketball history—to lose to Calipari so many times.
For the ninth time in the last 11 meetings between the two coaching legends over a span of 15 years, Cal walked away the winner—this time 75–66 in a men’s NCAA tournament second-round game. Once again, he got his team to play somewhere near its peak, while Pitino’s team stressed out and melted down.
This looked like the 2014 Sweet 16 meeting, when Cal was coaching Kentucky and Pitino was coaching Louisville. The Cardinals were a No. 4 seed on a roll, having won 14 of their last 15 games. Kentucky was a No. 8 seed on the rebound from a disappointing season, talented and still dangerous. Locked into a tougher fight than expected, Pitino’s Cardinals fell apart in the final five minutes and lost to a Kentucky team that would make an improbable run to the national championship game.
It looked like a few of the regular-season meetings between Cal and Pitino when they were at those two rival schools from the Bluegrass State. Pitino’s teams would shoot poorly and get into foul trouble; Cal’s teams would get a season-best performance from someone who hadn’t done much to that point (Dominique Hawkins, anyone?).
The pattern suggests that Cal remains deep in Pitino’s head.