Why 'trust' and 'Calipari' rarely share a sentence

But if any of that bothers Calipari in the least, he hasn't let on. He was a disaster during a brief stint in the NBA, but he's carved out a very comfortable living and the biggest piece of turf in the college game by setting up what amounts to a finishing school for pro prospects. He gets kids to share the ball by letting them move it around until they get a favorable matchup, which is what the NBA is about every night and why, with all that talent, he still wins nearly every night at the college level. And he makes it all look so easy.

"I'll tell you what's hard," Calipari said indisputably at one point during Thursday's interview session, "coaching bad players."

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org and follow him at Twitter.com/JimLitke.