It's No Contest

SAN ANTONIO -- One coach runs distinct, detailed, plotted plays.

The other coach just runs.

One coach screams at his players to place themselves in the exact formation they practiced the night before in a hotel ballroom in front of two potted plants and a giggling front-desk clerk.

The other coach just screams.

One coach controls and teaches by calling repeated timeouts, frequently using his entire allotment long before the end of the game.

The other coach suffered his only loss this year when his frantic team missed a last-second shot after he refused to call his final timeout.

If Ben Howland is John Wooden, then John Calipari is Abe Saperstein.

If Howland is cast directly from "Hoosiers," then Calipari comes from "White Man Can't Jump."

When looking for the difference in today's national semifinal between UCLA and Memphis, look no further than the end of the bench.

Howland will be the one coaching.

Calipari will be the one cheering.

That's perhaps an oversimplification, but at the center of each team is a leader whose heart is in a very different place.

Howland is a concocter of plays.

Calipari is a collector of players.

I'm picking a now-healthy UCLA to defeat Memphis today because, all things being equal, the play always beats the players.

It happened two years ago, in a regional final in Oakland, when Howland coached Calipari into the bay, 50-45.

That Memphis team had averaged 82 points in three tournament victories and had scored 88 points against UCLA earlier in the season.

But in the rematch, the Tigers shot 32% and made 15 two-point baskets.

What happened?

Howland adjusted, and Calipari didn't. Howland's players got better, and Calipari's didn't.

Howland coached a bunch of overachievers to the Final Four. Calipari's underachievers went home, again.

It's not that Calipari isn't a good basketball coach.

He won more games in his first 15 seasons than anybody but Roy Williams.

This year, he and Howland became only the second and third coaches in college history to have three consecutive 30-win seasons.

This will be his second trip to the Final Four despite coaching at only the University of Massachusetts and Memphis. But his first Final Four appearance was stripped because his center, Marcus Camby, was being paid by an agent at the time.

In other big games in his career, his great athletes were simply outschemed and outplayed.