Pressure mounts on Calipari to win title

NEW ORLEANS — John Calipari is like an In-N-Out Burger menu. You know exactly what you're getting.

There isn't much thinking involved.

It's why I never took issue with the Kentucky basketball coach and how he builds a Final Four contender each season, how Lexington has been transformed into a factory of one-and-done players, how if you're in the same room as Calipari for more than 10 minutes, there's a good chance you won't leave before writing a check for whatever he's selling.

But even college basketball's greatest wheeler and dealer has to be breathing through a tighter collar right now.

It has been written about and talked over and dissected to death the past several days, the fact bitter rivals Kentucky and Louisville meet in the first of two Final Four games today at the Superdome, a spot in Monday night's national championship game at stake, along with the sort of bragging rights that would make any between the Hatfields and McCoys seem docile.

"When you're the Kentucky head coach, John told me he had seven state troopers following him to the Kentucky Derby last year," Louisville coach Rick Pitino said. "I had seven gumbas from New York with me."

Pitino joked a lot Friday because that's what underdogs do, even at this time of year in this enormous a setting. He also can walk around wearing one thing Calipari can't -- a national championship ring that in coaching circles symbolizes an elite status few achieve.

Calipari, 53, has spent the past week insisting he sleeps each night like a baby, that whatever pressure exists to win his first national title, it doesn't bother him in the least.

I'm not so sure.

He should have won one at Memphis in 2008 but saw a late lead against Kansas evaporate in the final. His first team at Kentucky had five NBA first-round draft picks and didn't make the Final Four. He lost to Connecticut in a national semifinal last year.

Pitino won his title at Kentucky. So did Tubby Smith. So did Joe B. Hall. How many times can Calipari show up to college basketball's final weekend with the best team and lose before -- and I say this in the warmest of ways -- the lunatics of Big Blue Nation begin wondering if he ever will?

At what point does hero worshipping of a famous coach turn to guarded skepticism of a flawed man?

"I don't need to (win a championship)," Calipari said. "My whole job is to get these young people to play as well as they can, change habits, get them to reach their dreams.

"I've been put in this position. I'm the head coach at Kentucky. I don't know why. My grandparents came through Ellis Island. My parents are high school educated. Why am I coaching at Kentucky? Have no idea. Shouldn't be there. Not from the state. Never played for any of the great coaches. But I have the opportunity, and at the end of the day, all it's about is getting my team to play its best."

It has to be about more. I believe in such a thing as certain coaches having their time, something Gene Keady and John Chaney and other accomplished basketball minds never experienced. Everything about this Final Four insists it is Calipari's time.

I don't care who you are or how many games you have won or how many millions of dollars you have earned, validation is important to coaches, and there is no higher a level than winning the national championship.

You could say it was meant to be this way, for Calipari to see Pitino and Louisville as his first of two hurdles along the path to cutting down nets, that if there is a team he should have to go through to reach that ladder Monday, it's Kentucky's most hated rival and the opposing coach to whom he has most often been compared.

"Basically, everybody has a destination," Pitino said. "It's the methods to get to your destination. They recruit probably the best in the country. If you're a player thinking about going to the NBA right away, Kentucky will be on your immediate list. They have been to back-to-back Final Fours, so (Calipari's) way is working.

"(Calipari) probably coaches young players better than anyone in the game. I don't know if I would ever want to coach a new group of freshmen every year. Very difficult. But, really, when you finally win it all, it's an awful lot of fun. So it's a lot of pressure, because as we all know, anything can happen in a basketball game."

He smiled when he said it because his is a hand comfortable under the weight of a certain ring.

John Calipari doesn't have one.

Believe it. The pressure mounts.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from noon to 3 p.m. Monday through Friday on "Gridlock," ESPN Radio 1100 AM and 98.9 FM. Follow him on Twitter: @edgraney.