KNOXVILLE – Kentucky is Tennessee’s oldest and most familiar basketball rival.
The 219th installment of the border clash will have a friendly twist.
When Rick Barnes was considering the Tennessee job, one of the coaches who told him to take it was Kentucky’s John Calipari, whom Barnes called a “true friend” on Monday.
The first-year coach of the Volunteers later pointed to the rival Wildcats as the program his is trying to emulate.
“I think I’m right saying that Tennessee has had more success against Kentucky than anybody in the history of the league, which is something to proud of,” Barnes said.
“Being two and a half hours or whatever it is a car drive from here, it should be a big rivalry. The fact of the matter is I want our program to get where we’re like their program in the fact that everywhere we go, I want people to get really excited. We don’t have to look far to see what we should be striving to be.
“I also know that the University of Tennessee has had success, and it’s about, here, stability and consistency. That’s what we hope our staff can do, that we can really make it one of the great rivalries and what we all want it to be. To make it a rivalry, you’ve got to beat somebody. You’ve got to beat people to do that. I hope over time we can do that.”
The relationship between Barnes and Calipari began nearly four decades ago at a summer basketball camp at Pittsburgh. While the former has been winning at Providence, Clemson and Texas, the latter generated similar success at Massachusetts, Memphis and Kentucky. Tonight’s meeting will be the fifth between the two.
Calipari on Monday compared his relationship to Barnes to one he would have with a coach he’s worked for or with. Both coaches said they can depend on each other whenever needed, and the most recent example may have been last spring, when Calipari told Barnes he should take the Tennessee job.
“I said, ‘Take that job,'” Calipari said on the SEC coaches’ teleconference. “That is one of the best jobs (in the SEC). You’re close to (Washington) D.C., where you made your bones. D.C. is his area. You can recruit there. You’re going to have everything you need there. It has an unbelievable following for the team.
“You’ve just got to win. The last couple of guys kind of screwed it up a little bit. I said, ‘I’m telling you, I’m in this league, and it’s one of the best jobs in this league.'”
Some coaching endorsements ring hollow, but Barnes knew this advice didn’t fit that bill.
“I trust him to know that he would not ever tell me anything that he didn’t believe,” the Volunteers’ coach said. “He wouldn’t just say it to say it. His exact words were that he thinks this is one of the top jobs in this league and can be as good as anybody. He said to me, ‘You need to take that job.’
“He said to me, ‘I don’t like the way you’re being treated there (at Texas) right now, and you ought to take that job.'”
Barnes’ first season with the Vols took a southward turn last week, when they coughed up an eight-point lead in the final four minutes to lose at Alabama and followed it up by turning a 14-point halftime lead into a 12-point loss at TCU.
Calipari’s Wildcats, on the other hand, won three SEC games by double digits and took Kansas to overtime on the road in the last two weeks.
“What it gets down to as much as anything for us,” Barnes said, “is how do we handle adversity when we’re playing well and understanding the game well enough to have enough respect for the game knowing that we’re playing against teams that are going to fight back. They’re not just going to go away. What happens, when they start coming back, how do we respond?
“That’s what we haven’t done a really good job of. It’s either been, really for the most part, at the beginning of the second half or somewhere really before the five-minute mark to go in the game. After every game I look at myself and know that I can do a better job, but we know that we’ve got have everybody doing their part.”
Calipari believes Barnes will have Tennessee competitive again in due time.
“If I were an (athletic director), and it’s like, ‘OK, time to rebuild,’ there’s only one or two or three guys that are above the crowd,” Calipari said. “And he’s one of them, in my mind. He’ll go get it done.”
Contact Patrick Brown at pbrown@timesfreepress.com.