Tuesday night was a good college basketball night – storylines for Purdue, NC State, Kentucky and many others

Last night was one to put the remote to heavy use. There was all sorts of college basketball going on, not to mention the Islanders absolutely smoking the once-vaunted Detroit Red Wings. I can’t wait to talk to Matt Rennie (aka Mr. Detroit who is my editor at The Post) this morning. Rennie is apt to duck my call after that performance.

The college hoops I saw had a myriad of story lines. Purdue lost for a second straight game—at home no less—blowing a late 13-point lead to Ohio State. What does this prove? Nothing we don’t already know: once you get in to conference play no one is going to win every night. Texas is going to lose at some point and so is Kentucky although it is impossible not to be impressed with the Wildcats. I made my first trip ever to Florida’s O’Connell Center last year and it is a VERY tough place to play. Kentucky made it look easy, taking the lead midway in the first half and looking to be in control from that point on.

The other game that caught my eye was North Carolina State winning at Florida State. It’s the road wins you notice this time of year. Wake Forest escaping Maryland in overtime only means the Deacons held serve and Maryland missed a chance for a bonus victory. Baylor losing at Colorado is the same thing. Teams lose on the road. When you win on the road, especially against a ranked team or even a good unranked team, that’s something to hang your hat on.

There may not have been a team or a coach more in need of a win than N.C. State and Sidney Lowe. Two Sundays ago, the Wolfpack had Florida beaten until a 70-foot shot at the buzzer went in and the Gators won by one. Because I always connect Billy Donovan in my mind to Rick Pitino (since he played for him at Providence and coached under him at Kentucky) I remembered a game years ago in Hawaii when a Kentucky player grabbed a rebound in the final seconds, went the length of the court and scored to beat Arizona at the buzzer.

“We call that play explosion,” Pitino said after the game. Back then Rick always had to take a bow. Now I think he would just say, “the kid made a hell of a play.” Donovan simply said his kid hit an amazing shot and left it at that.

After that brutal loss, State beat Holy Cross (yawn) but then blew a nine point lead last Saturday AT HOME to Virginia, which is still learning how to play Tony Bennett slow-ball. So to go TO Florida State and win was a very big deal.

Lowe will always be a hero at N.C. State for his role in the 1983 national championship. He was a superb point guard on that team. One of my favorite (among many) Jim Valvano stories is about Lowe dribbling the clock down late in a game (there was no shot clock). He came over near the bench and said, “Coach, I need a blow.”

Valvano nodded and said, “You’ll get one Sidney—just as soon as your eligibility is used up.”

This is Lowe’s fourth year at State and he hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament yet. He had an unlikely run to the ACC Tournament final his first season but that’s been about it for excitement. State fans more or less ran Herb Sendek out of town even though he had gotten State into the tournament five years in a row and reached the sweet sixteen. Sendek didn’t beat Duke or North Carolina enough and his dry personality wasn’t enough to overcome that defect. Lowe has plenty of personality and that State pedigree but he hasn’t beaten State or Carolina very much and hasn’t won nearly as much as Sendek did. It seems unlikely he’d get run off after four years but we live in an era where Ivy League coaches are getting jettisoned (two of them now—Glenn Miller at Penn, Terry Dunn at Dartmouth) in midseason. So nothing is a certain in coaching.

Ask the Tennessee fans who spent the last year learning to love Lane Kiffin.

Kentucky’s continuing success is going to continue to raise the issue of John Calipari’s move to UK from Memphis; the players he ran off and his history at Memphis and Massachusetts. Everyone knows the Kentucky people could care less about Calipari’s past, they care only about his present and future. They may already be erecting a statue to him by now.

In a very real sense they are no different than other fans—only there are more of them and they do tend to go a little bit nuts in both directions. I still remember being in a car during Tubby Smith’s first season at the school (which ended in a national title) and hearing a fan call into his show. “Coach,” he said, “I just want you to know I haven’t given up on this team yet.”

Kentucky was 25-4 at that moment.

One coach I know who knows Calipari well and has recruited against him for years said this about him: “He’s the most dangerous guy in the game right now. Why? Because he’s a good coach and a good guy and people like him. But he’s going to do whatever it takes to win—whatever it takes. You think it’s a coincidence he’s had two Final Fours vacated? Sure and Mark McGwire took steroids because of injuries.”

That sums up the way a lot of coaches feel about Calipari. Some of that is jealousy but some of that IS his past. I fall into the category of people who like John. I first met him in 1984 when he was a 25-year-old assistant coach at Kansas and was working at The Five Star camp. We were close in age and hit it off right away. John liked to talk. My job is to listen.

Ten years later, when John had taken U-Mass from nowhere to a No. 1 ranking, Peter Teeley—who had been Bush 1’s speechwriter when he was vice president—came to me and asked if I could help him put together a charity basketball tournament in Washington. Gary Williams said yes right away on behalf of Maryland; John Thompson said no right away on behalf of Georgetown. We needed a glamour team to come in and play Maryland the first year. I called John. “Let me see if I can move some things on my schedule,” he said. He did and the U-Mass-Maryland game gave the event credibility that has helped carry it through 15 successful years.

(Note to Georgetown fans who keep asking me why we have “kept Georgetown out,” of the event. Nothing could be further from the truth. We’ve negotiated with Craig Esherick, with John Thompson III and with Bernie Muir and Adam Brick when they were AD’s and gotten nowhere. I still believe Big John Thompson is pulling that string).

So it is hard for me to not like Calipari for a number of reasons. But there’s no doubt the more his team, built in large part around two kids he brought with him when he left Memphis who are likely to be one-and-outs, will continue to be a source of controversy as it continues to win.

Tonight, I’ll be I Charlottesville for my first in-person look at both Georgia Tech and Virginia, with new coach Tony Bennett. UVA had a good win on Saturday when it won at N.C. State but tonight will be a much bigger test against a Tech team with one of the better young frontcourts in the country.

Remarkably, this will be my first game at The John Paul Jones Arena. I’ve seen it because Craig Littlepage gave me a tour a couple years ago when I went down to speak to some UVA students, but haven’t been there for a game. I know it is a marked upgrade for Virginia over creaky old University Hall, but I for one will miss the old place. Not only did it have excellent press seating it had the best media parking—like 10 yards from the back door to the building—in the country. If you think that’s not a big deal to someone like me you’re wrong. Parking, especially in winter, is always key for me. My guess is I’ll spend a lot of time moaning tonight about the good old days. But getting to have dinner at The Aberdeen Barn with a bunch of my old friends in the UVA media will make it worth the trip. Oh, and the game should be good too.

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I have to admit I was surprised yesterday that some posters and e-mailers seemed to think I let Mark McGwire off the hook. I admitted up front that I liked him. Then I went on to say he clearly hadn’t told the entire truth when he claimed he only used steroids to deal with injuries and to stay on the field. I also said he did not belong in the Hall of Fame and that I wouldn’t vote for him if I had a vote. I don’t think that’s letting him off the hook. I would have said the exact same thing about Barry Bonds—who I can’t stand.

Oh well, can’t please everyone.

Pitino, Calipari and Now Gillispie - Crazy Couple of Weeks in Kentucky; Quick Favre Talk

The news has been coming from all directions in sports this week. Some of it actually matters, much of it—the breathless updates on Brett Favre’s relationship with his new teammates come to mind—does not.

Let’s talk about Favre for just a moment. I believe ESPN now has 43 people assigned to the NFL which means there are 43 people getting yelled at regularly for getting beaten on stories by Jay Glazer. One of the 43 put something out the other day about a rift between Favre and his new Viking teammates. My guess is three or four of the Vikings have grumbled—not for attribution of course—about Favre’s Hamlet act and all the attention he has been getting since he rode into camp. (I’m also guessing none of them actually reference Hamlet).

Gee, that’s a surprise. So here’s the deal: Favre produces wins, everyone will love him; he doesn’t the grumbling will grow louder. Someone may actually go on the record. There is truly nothing more meaningless in sports than the month of August in the NFL, unless it is the month of July in the NFL. But because the sport is an obsession in this country, training camp workouts are actually analyzed. In New York, they are STILL talking about Mark Sanchez’s first pass in an exhibition game a couple weeks ago as if it was Eli Manning to Plaxico Burress for the winning touchdown two Super Bowls ago.

The NFL will matter—a lot—beginning September 10th. Until then, everything, including what Michael Vick did in his EXHIBITION debut last night, tells us nothing and matters about as much as the Mets 34 remaining games. (No truth to the rumor that they’re bringing Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman back to pitch, although I do think they could help).

If you want news right now the state of Kentucky is the place to be.

As a reporter, it is tough to criticize Rick Pitino for actually meeting with the media and taking questions on the soap opera that his life has become. Most guys in his situation would hide behind the, “it’s under adjudication,” excuse. And yet, listening to Pitino, it was hard to feel sorry for him—his family, yes—Pitino, no.

This is on him, even though there seems little doubt that he got himself involved with someone who isn’t playing with all 52 cards. Maybe not half a deck come to think of it. The notion that the media is in any way responsible for this is simply ridiculous. None of the media were in that restaurant six years ago. For Pitino’s sake, I hope he’s telling the truth and the whole truth right now. If any hole at all is punched in his story, as popular as he is at Louisville and as successful as he has been, he’ll be gone. My gut says this one isn’t going to have a happy ending for anyone.

On the subject of unhappy endings: how about the sage of Billy (the kid) Gillispie. Just a few years ago he was one of college basketball’s hot coaches. He had taken downtrodden programs at UTEP and at Texas A+M and built winners and that got him hired at Kentucky. That meant a lot of money, a lot of glamour and a lot of scrutiny. Gillispie didn’t win enough at UK and got fired this spring. A coach with his resume can certainly bounce back from something like that.

But he had two DUI stops along the way, plus the weird story about the lawsuit that happened because he never got around to actually signing his contract at Kentucky. The other night, he got stopped for DUI again. He refused to take a breathalyzer and spent the night in jail. Not good. The worst part may have been the cop who made the stop referring to him as “Billy,” when describing his condition. My guess is most police in Kentucky would NEVER refer to Coach Calipari as “John,” or “Cal,” at this point. Then again, he’s never lost a game at UK.

Can Gillispie come back from this and coach? Sure. He’s won before so someone will take a chance on him someplace. But if the police description of his condition is accurate, he needs to get some help before he thinks about coaching again.

As for Coach Cal? He’s started off-season workouts at Kentucky and is as happy as a hockey fan when a fight breaks out. My guess is John will win a national championship—or two—at Kentucky. If he does, his on court resume should make him a lock Hall of Famer. The question is this: With two Final Four appearances vacated at two schools, will he get in? Other coaches convicted of crimes by the NCAA police are in the Hall, how will the voters (whose names are kept strictly secret by the oh-so-sanctimonious people who run the Hall) treat Calipari when the time comes?

One other Kentucky note I’ve been meaning to get to all week: In writing my Washington Post column earlier this week I repeated a mistake I’ve made for years. I always thought it was $10,000 that fell out of the envelope en route to Chris Mills’ father. It was actually $1,000. I apologize for the mistake I wish it was my first, I’m pretty sure it won’t be my last. I will say this though: it seems to me that sending that kind of money is even STUPIDER than sending 10 grand. If you’re trying to buy a player, BUY him for crying out loud.

There’s a guy who runs a website listing the all-time enemies list for Kentucky basketball. (Talk about needing a life). I’m proud to report I’ve been number one on that list for many years ahead of such villains as Sports Illustrated, Billy Packer and Bob Knight. He was absolutely right to complain about me getting the dollar figure wrong. I’d also say he’s sort of missing the forest for the trees but that’s another story for another day.

Pitino Talk....

I was traveling most of the day Wednesday so I only heard snippets of the Rick Pitino story throughout the day. Some of the details made me wince. Others were just, well, shocking--if in fact they are true. None of us has the right to sit in moral judgment of others but it just strikes me as downright STUPID--especially as a major celebrity to end up having sex with someone you just met on the table of a restaurant. What's remarkable is that such a story stayed secret this long.

Hearing the lurid details, I thought about a number of things, one a line I heard years ago from a prominent basketball coach who was describing some of his own escapades. "The problem with drinking," he said, "is that it makes you think you’re invisible."

I also remembered another coach who often explained to other coaches that his policy was to walk into a bar and look for the most unattractive woman he could find. His logic was simple: “It’s easier that way."

Look, it's sad but true that basketball coaches, like men--and, let's face it women (this woman in the Pitino story sounds like a real charmer)--do things like this every day. That's not a defense of Pitino, I'm not a believer in the, "everybody does it so it's okay," defense but we all know people who do things late at night and then wake up the next morning saying, "Oh My God, what have I done?" That doesn't mean, however, that they don't do it again.

We all know divorce is the American Way. I speak first hand. On the PGA Tour, divorce is so frequent that second wives are called, "mulligans."

This, however, is the kind of story that is going to be hard to escape.

Whether Pitino can survive this is hard to say. One thing is for sure: if he was just an average coach or a good coach, he'd be gone this morning. But he's a Hall of Fame coach who won 31 games last year and has taken three different schools to five Final Fours and won a national championship at Kentucky in 1996. That means Louisville isn't going to be eager to get rid of him. Winners are frequently far less guilty than non-winners. Already I have read one column this morning saying that this shouldn't hurt Pitino's recruiting. I'm not sure what's worse, the fact that the question is raised or that it's going to be an important factor in whether he survives.

My own experiences with Pitino have been all over the map. I first met him when he was coaching at Boston University and, like everyone in basketball, knew this was a coach on his way up. I remember his run to The Final Four at Providence which, tragically, coincided with the death of his infant son. We fell out--big time--when he was at Kentucky. I've never been a big fan of Kentucky basketball as an entity because I don't like the idea of, "basketball as religion," the way it is embraced there.

That wasn't what really turned me on Pitino. It was an incident in 1994 when, after a second round loss to Marquette in the NCAA Tournament--a game in which Rick stubbornly refused to back off his press against a point guard who was shredding it--he sat next to his three seniors at the postgame press conference and said of a team that had won 28 games, "this Kentucky team lacked leadership, chemistry and drive."

In other words, "I coached good--they played bad."

I can't stand coaches who do that and I wrote that and said that even as Rick did a stunning job the next few years at Kentucky. Still, I was pretty tough on him. After North Carolina beat Kentucky in the 1995 regional final I wrote, "The numbers for Rick Pitino remain the same: two autobiographies, no championships."

Accurate, but pretty mean.

A year later when Kentucky won the title, someone sent me a Pitino interview in a Kentucky basketball magazine in which he was breathlessly asked if he was going to write another book. "I said I wasn't going to write one until we won a title," he answered. "Because I wasn't going to give guys like John Feinstein the chance to rip me again. Now, I'm going to write one."

I dropped him a note saying, "NOW you should write one." You'll be shocked to learn he didn't write back.

Then he went to the Celtics and demanded the title of team president even though Red Auerbach had been team president forever. Red had no intention of interfering with Rick--he was retired by then and was there as a sounding board for anyone who came to him, but he wasn't going to tell anyone in Boston what to do--but Rick had to have the title. Needless to say I came down hard on him for that and his subsequent failures with the Celtics.

It was Ralph Willard who played peacemaker between us. I got to know Ralph well while researching, "The Last Amateurs," in '1999-2000. He had come to Holy Cross after coaching at Western Kentucky and Pittsburgh but was close to Rick--they are both from Long Island and Ralph worked with Rick in New York and then for him at Kentucky.

"You guys don't get along because you're exactly alike," Ralph told me. "You're both ball-busters."

One afternoon during a summer camp Ralph was sitting with Rick and waved me over to sit with them. I did, for about an hour. Pitino was at Louisville by then. He was willing to let bygones be bygones--I'd certainly ripped him a hell of a lot more than he'd ripped me--and we went from there. He even came and played in 'The Bruce Edwards Celebrity Pro-Am,' a couple years ago, which was a really nice thing for him to do.

Let me say this: I'd have felt badly about this if we HADN'T smoked the peace pipe. This is a sad state of affairs for a great coach who I know has impacted a lot of people's lives in a positive way. Of course what's really sad is that his future won't ultimately be decided by adding up how much good he's done, how much charity work he's been involved with (a LOT) or any testimonials from coaches or past players about his character.

It will be decided by whether the school thinks he can still win basketball games. That doesn't make Louisville any different from anyone else in Division 1 basketball.

And that really IS a shame.