Bluegrass bond hasn't gone south

Somewhere in rural Mississippi almost 20 years ago, Tubby Smith abruptly pulled up to a countryside stand, briefly interrupting a recruiting trip with his boss, Rick Pitino.

"You've gotta try this," Pitino remembers Smith telling him, after he handed him a bag of boiled peanuts.

Smith recalls Pitino's response: "Boiled peanuts, are you kidding me?"

Smith was a Kentucky assistant for Pitino at the time. The memory of that day still is cause for laughter.

"There we are in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of some field sitting on milk crates, eating boiled peanuts," Pitino said. "And that's about as down home as I can get."

Neither could have anticipated then the ways in which their lives would intersect. Smith's two seasons at Kentucky -- from 1989-1991 -- helped him land his first head coaching gig at Tulsa. Both coaches survived the fishbowl that is University of Kentucky basketball, and both added to the storied history of the school with NCAA national titles. They became cross-state rivals, when Pitino left the NBA for Louisville in 2001, while Smith was the head coach at Kentucky.

The competition between the two men who consider themselves longtime friends continues Saturday when the Gophers take on the No. 9 Cardinals at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. And it's worth far more than peanuts to both coaches.

For Pitino, it's another opportunity for his Cardinals to brush off an early-season loss against Western Kentucky. For Smith, it's the greatest measuring stick of his Gophers career. Minnesota brings a 9-0 record into the game, but has not faced a team the caliber of Louisville.

Both coaches are uneasy about their upcoming matchup, even though it will be the 12th time the two coaches have faced each other -- Pitino has a 7-4 edge, although Smith won their last meeting, a 61-49 Kentucky victory at Louisville during the 2006-07 season.

"You have a lot of competition ... because you know someone has to win and someone has to lose," Smith said. "And when you have that much respect for someone and you care about someone, it's usually a tough feeling because you're sitting over there going, 'Man, I hope both teams play well.'"

Pitino said he's happy when any of his former assistants are successful, even if it's at his own team's expense.

"I'm a little bit different than most coaches," he said. "To me, obviously we all want to win badly, so when I lose to an assistant coach of mine that's a friend, I don't feel quite as bad because I'm happy for them."

Smith was an assistant at South Carolina when Pitino left his job coaching with the NBA New York Knicks to become head coach at Kentucky in 1989. Pitino said he found Smith after a search for an assistant coach who understood the South.

"What I did when I took the Kentucky job, I just called about eight or 10 people who I respected and said give me the top three recruiters in the South who carries himself with integrity and has a very strong work ethic," Pitino said. "And in everybody's top three was the name Tubby."

In Pitino's book, "Rebound Rules: The Art of Success 2.0," he praises his first coaching staff at Kentucky: "My staff of Ralph Willard, Herb Sendek, Tubby Smith and Billy Donovan all went on to become head coaches with tremendous results: three national championships (two for Donovan and one for Smith); at least one NCAA tournament Sweet Sixteen appearance for each coach; and a total of 1,328 collegiate victories heading into the 2008-09 season."

Being a part of that group and learning from Pitino helped set the tone for the rest of Smith's career, which included stops at Tulsa, Georgia and then a return to Kentucky. Prior to joining Pitino's staff, Smith's only head coaching experience was at the high school level.

"I always credit Rick with a big part of the success that I've had," Smith said. "I learned a lot of things in the two years I was there with coach Pitino."

Pitino left Kentucky in 1997 to move to the NBA Boston Celtics. Kentucky officials tabbed Smith as Pitino's replacement, and coaching in Pitino's shadow proved difficult despite the fact that Smith won a national title in his first year at Kentucky.

Critics said Smith only won with Pitino's players. Pitino has never wavered in his support of Smith, saying he would not have won a national title with the squad Smith coached in 1998. And when Smith was on the hot seat prior to taking the Minnesota job, Pitino publicly stated on Kentucky airwaves that losing Smith would set Kentucky back years.

"Any time you lose that type of continuity in a program, I don't care who it is, it's going to take time," Pitino said.

Smith, for his part, said Pitino could have won multiple national titles with the talent assembled in 1998. Pitino has all of the qualities of a successful basketball coach, Smith said, which is why the Gophers coach continues to admire him.

Pitino, however, has tried to warn his buddy that he might not have his Louisville team in the best shape come Saturday. The Cardinals were scheduled to take a flight to Phoenix at 1 a.m. after a game against Mississippi on Thursday night.

"I'm just hoping my team survives this trip and obviously, has their legs to play against a terrific team like Minnesota," Pitino said.

Smith knows Pitino too well to worry about the effect that a little jet lag will have on one of the toughest teams and coaches he's faced since he arrived at Minnesota in 2007.

"That's a given that his guys are going to give it everything they have," he said.

Something he started to learn 20 years ago over boiled peanuts.