CARDINALS

Sullivan | Pitino pries open UK can of worms

Tim Sullivan

@TimSullivan714

Rick Pitino is that kid in the back of the class with the quick wit and the daring disposition. Give him a can of worms and he reflexively reaches for the can opener. And if you don't happen to have a can of worms handy, just sit tight and Pitino will provide one.

The University of Louisville's perennially provocative basketball coach opened his press briefing Monday by predicting Tuesday's game against Ohio State could produce the best atmosphere in the short history of the KFC Yum! Center. Since Pitino tends to speak in superlatives, the comment barely registered at first with the assembled media multitude.

Except, wait a minute, wasn't there an implicit slight in what he was saying? Was Pitino suggesting a midweek, non-conference matchup with a school Louisville last met in 2003 was somehow superior to the aura, anticipation and animus of a visit from Big Blue Nation?

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Yep. That's exactly what he meant.

"I don't think Kentucky is a great atmosphere, I really don't," Pitino said. "I think there are 5,000 of them getting in our building. We get five getting into their building and they get 5,000. I don't think it's a great atmosphere. I would put that 10th on the list of great atmospheres."

He went on.

"When I was at Kentucky, sometimes we'd go into Freedom Hall and at the end of the game, you'd hear the 'Let's Go Blue' cheers," he said. "I wish we'd have what they have, where, if you see red, you don't get out of the building. I tell my children to wear blue (at Rupp Arena), so they can live."

This was Pitino being playful, walking a narrow rhetorical tightrope while clinging to a core truth. It's one of his trademarks. Just last week, the Hall of Fame coach elicited eyerolls by saying he had gone so far as to play "four white guys and an Egyptian" to show mercy to outclassed Savannah State.

If that statement was flippant, it was also factual. And if Kentucky-Louisville games lack the atmosphere the Cardinals' coach would prefer, chalk it up to his competitive desire to cultivate home-court advantage and not as a shortage of respect or a failure to appreciate the UK-U of L feud.

If anything, Rick Pitino may be more deferential to Kentucky than many Louisville fans would wish. He customarily refers to UK as "Camelot," including a line to that effect in last year's induction speech at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Monday, he called the current Wildcats "one of the best teams ever assembled."

Yet as of 6:40 p.m. Monday night, my tweet about Pitino's comment concerning the atmosphere at Kentucky games had been retweeted 155 times; his "one of the best teams ever assembled" statement just four times. If you want to read that as a sign that fans tend to react more quickly to perceived friction than to praise, feel free. If it sometimes seems as if scores of Kentucky and Louisville fans prowl the Internet in search of fresh ammunition in a never-ending game of "gotcha," it's only because it's true.

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Pitino probably did not intend to be drawn into a discussion of Kentucky fans Monday, but he tends to err on the side of candor when other coaches would instinctively change the subject. After Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim used the platform provided by his 900^th victory to speak out on gun control in 2012, Pitino made headlines nationwide with his own extemporaneous reaction. Two months ago, after declining an interview request on the subject of shoe companies' influence on recruiting, Pitino plunged into that topic at length and virtually without prompting during a preseason press conference.

This makes for a great atmosphere, unless you prefer to be bored.

Tim Sullivan can be reached at (502) 582-4650, by email at tsullivan@courier-journal.com, and on Twitter @TimSullivan714