HOUSTON -- This week, former assistants of Jim Calhoun and John Calipari offered their opinions on a heated head-coaching rivalry that began in the early 1990s. Once Connecticut and Kentucky got to Houston, it was Calhoun and Calipari’s turn to explain the relationship between the two coaching giants. They coached against each other for the first time in 1989, Calipari’s first year at Massachusetts. Calhoun and the Huskies beat UMass in consecutive seasons before the rivalry took a six-year hiatus because UConn chose not to continue the series. But that didn’t stop the competition. Calipari signed the best player from the state of Connecticut in Marcus Camby and led the Minutemen to something UConn hadn’t achieved yet -- a No. 1 ranking and a trip to the Final Four (1996). “We were the first team to become No. 1 in New England,’’ Calipari told ESPN.com in Houston. “I wasn’t coaching against Jim Calhoun,’’ Calipari added. “I was just doing my own little thing there, driving everybody crazy. We were fortunate to have good players. We were a top-25 team and then we got Marcus Camby and became a top-five team.’’
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