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John Calipari and Nick Saban are linked by success, approach

John Calipari - photo by Tammie Brown | WildcatWorld.com

– photo by Tammie Brown | WildcatWorld.com

He's insistent. Basketball is a sport of five, coach John Calipari says, not of 22. He'll say this a handful of times during a roughly 20-minute phone conversation, reiterating the numbers that separate him from Alabama coach Nick Saban.

Calipari needs just a handful of recruits to buy into his program while his counterpart needs dozens to be convinced. Winning titles this past season has helped both men in this respect. They don't drudge up and down the recruiting trail, they dance along it, picking out blue-chip prospects like produce at an overstocked supermarket.

Saban and Calipari, Calipari and Saban. Say it enough times and it will stick with you, like apples and oranges. They're a study in how two wildly different coaches can yield similar results. They're a study in mathematics. They apply different formulas yet end up with similar outcomes; Calipari is the soothsaying salesman with charm to spare and Saban is, well, none of those things.

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