PROVIDENCE -- The relationship between Rick Pitino and John Calipari stretches back decades to their time at the famed Five-Star Basketball Camp in Moon Township, Pa.. And the two men have been linked ever since across decades of coaching in college and the NBA.

The nicknames and comparisons followed John Calipari wherever he went. He was “The next Rick Pitino” or “Rick Pitino’s clone,” and it was time to have some fun. It was the day before Calipari’s Massachusetts Minutemen met Pitino’s Kentucky Wildcats in a 1992 Sweet 16 at the Spectrum,