Saturday, March 02, 2002
Five questions with John Calipari
By Michael Perry
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Memphis was a combined 61-58 (.513) in the four years before John Calipari took over as the Tigers' coach. Since then, they have gone 43-22 (.662) and Sunday have a chance to win a share of the Conference USA regular-season championship and the No. 1 seed in the league tournament if they upset the fourth-ranked University of Cincinnati at Shoemaker Center.
Calipari, who coach Massachusetts from 1988-96, is a graduate of Clarion, Pa., where he was the starting point guard for two years for the Division II school. He started his college career at North Carolina Wilmington.
Cal took some time this week to answer five questions from The Enquirer's Michael Perry.
Q: Is there one movie that just flat out makes you laugh out loud?
A: Something About Mary.
Q: If you could change one thing about yourself, what would that be?
A: Grow to 6-5 to grow into my nose.
Q: Best advice you ever got?
A: A business friend, Pat Nardelli from Pittsburgh, told me, “You can have a bad deal with good people. Those things happen. But you can never have a good deal with bad people.” That is what our approach to recruiting is based on.
Q: Is there a piece of fan mail, good or bad, that you've saved and will never forget?
A: I always have four or five letters ... some are ethnic, some are just plain mean. When things are going well, I like to read them because they put everything in perspective. At this point I never open a piece of mail which does not have a return address. If a piece of mail comes into our office without a return address, our secretary tears it up.
Q: Your team was picked in the preseason to win Conference USA ...
A: We knew and everybody knew that it was going to go through Cincinnati. Saying that with six new players it's our league now is crazy. It's still Cincinnati's league. They've got four seniors. They've got, in my opinion, the coach of the year (Bob Huggins). They've got in my opinion, a guy that's probably one of three guys for player of the year (Steve Logan). They've got senior leadership, a great home-court advantage. They've got it rolling. We're trying to match some of the things that they're doing.
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Five questions with John Calipari
