By WILL GRAVES
AP Sports Writer
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.
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