John Calipari on Bruce Pearl rivalry: 'I don't look at coaches as rivals'

John Calipari loves him some Bruce Pearl and doesn’t exactly see a rivalry with the Auburn head coach.

Now at Arkansas, Calipari hit the point home even more, saying the rivalry is with the school. That’s how he looked at it while he coached Kentucky.

When asked specifically about Pearl, Calipari denied any sort of rivalry with the Tigers head coach. He then mentioned others in the same boat.

“I don’t look at coaches as rivals, it’s more schools,” Calipari said. “And I’ve been doing this a long time. And so you could say they’re 20 rivals, but many of them are really close friends. You know, we played Mark Few last year. He was happy but then looked at me and he was sick. They beat us in Rupp Arena … We got (Nate Oats) at home pretty good. And you would think okay, but he got them together. He did what he had to do and Rick Barnes had a great run, a bunch of teams had good runs and some of us lost early.”

Will Calipari’s tune change in a new place? Maybe, maybe not. It seems like Calipari is in a new place as he starts his tenure at Arkansas.

In the latter stages of his career, perhaps Calipari is an older, wiser coach who’s focused on the results and not any beef with coaches.

John Calipari acknowledges changes in college basketball

In the new NIL era of college basketball, John Calipari has learned that he will have to adjust his approach. The new Arkansas head coach primarily made his name at Kentucky, Memphis and other stops off of routinely signing the top freshmen in the country.

Speaking at the SEC spring meetings on Wednesday, the coach opened up about how his roster-building process has changed in light of what he’s learned over the past few seasons.

“It’s been a breath of fresh air, you could say,” Calipari said. “Fifteen great years. We got a lot done. I think last year’s team with what we were able to do playing so many young guys. The lesson was, you can’t do this now with seven freshmen. You just can’t. You’re gonna hit a team that’s 25 years old on average and that team’s physically gonna get ya.

“So now we have a couple of transfers that are older. Some kids that transferred from Kentucky that went through it and are a year older and some freshmen.”