It’s been only in the last couple chapters of the careers of Tom Izzo and John Calipari that the two Hall of Fame coaches have really gotten to know each other.
For all the decades that Izzo, age 70, and Calipari, 68, have honed their craft, their teams only first locked horns a little more than a dozen years ago. The two members of college basketball’s Italian Coaching Order, a fraternity including Rick Pitino and Geno Auriemma, have hit it off by serving on many boards together as well. “I shouldn’t be close friends with him at all,” Izzo said of Calipari in 2013.