One is a hyper, intense little magpie chasing fame far from his roots and the other is a grim hometown hostage who always appears to have just come back from a tax audit.
Their teams will play basketball Monday night for the first prize of college basketball, a worthwhile thing for the most part.
“If I could pick a coach I could lose to, it would be Jim Boeheim,” said Rick Pitino.
This is no doubt a sincere sentiment, but more easily said because the chances of Pitino’s Kentucky team losing to Boeheim’s Syracuse team are roughly the same as a hammer losing to a thumb.
The two have a history, as do most in the interlocking lodge of college basketball coaches. As Pitino recommended John Calipari for the Massachusetts job, so Boeheim gave Pitino his first assistant’s job, a story better told by Pitino than Boeheim.
Let’s start with the Boeheim version first. “I needed two things,” Boeheim said, recalling his priorities when he got the Syracuse job 20 years ago. “I needed to recruit Roosevelt Bouie and I needed to sign Rick as an assistant. I think the first one was more important.
“But I went to New York to get Rick and I had to leave the next day. I went to his hotel and called him.”
Pitino can pick the story up from here.
“It was my wedding day,” Pitino said. “I had literally just carried my wife across the threshold and put her down on the bed. This is an Irish-Catholic girl. This is a big step. And the phone rings.
“I answer and hear this whiny voice who says he wants to offer me a job. I tell him I’m kind of occupied. And I’m Italian so it may be five or six hours. But he insists, so I go down to see him.”
Pitino keeps leaving the interview to use the telephone.
“I’m calling my wife to tell her I will be right up,” Pitino said. “But Jim thinks I’m negotiating another job. I get my salary up from $14,000 to $17,500.”
Boeheim again:
“I go off to recruit Bouie and Rick goes to sign Louis Carr and Joanne is parked in Syracuse in my apartment with my three roommates.”
“He’s a bachelor then,” Pitino said. “He lives with a harness handicapper, a bartender and another coach, who is the most degenerate of the four of them.”
“We get Bouie and Carr and it probably made my career at Syracuse,” Boeheim said. “And Joanne doesn’t seem to have suffered much since.”
“A true story,” said Pitino.
Two decades later Pitino is far from New York, his city, his state and his state of mind. He is the most celebrated coach to never have won a title. “People are always asking, `Two books, and no championships?’ ” Pitino said. And Boeheim remains at Syracuse, where he was a player and an assistant for 13 years before he became the head coach. In 1987, he coached his alma mater to within a last-second shot of the national title, closer than Pitino has ever been.
“When I started,” Boeheim said, “you used to get crap and make no money. Now you make money, but it’s still the same crap.”
They seem exact opposites, Pitino full of quick humor and a game-show host’s patter. Boeheim rarely bothers.
“My image is what it is,” he said.
Curiously, it is Pitino who has everything to lose in this final game. It is Pitino’s reputation that will suffer if his old boss manages to knock off Kentucky. Pitino has already won the national title by beating Massachusetts. The Syracuse game is supposed to be a victory lap.
“That we should be the overwhelming favorite is nonsense,” Pitino said, “absolute nonsense.”
The tournament success of Syracuse has already redeemed Boeheim’s reputation. By getting his team to the final game, Boeheim has changed the prevailing suspicion about his ability to coach. He has even showed a bit of charm and wit.
“Just stop calling me a bad coach,” Boeheim said.
“He is one of the premier coaches in basketball,” Pitino said. “Whatever happens Monday night, I am not going to outcoach him. I just hope our players outplay his.”
The friends you make at college are the friends you keep.
