Bruiser Flint, Calipari Whisperer, wants to be a head coach again. For now he seeks NCAA glory with Kentucky.

PITTSBURGH — James “Bruiser” Flint flashed that bright Bruiser Flint smile when asked the question.

Do you want to be a head coach again?

“Hell, yeah,” Flint said, chuckling Wednesday morning in the lobby of the hotel where Kentucky is staying this week for its first-round — and second-round, the Wildcats hope — NCAA Tournament game.

Flint, 58, was fired from his job at Drexel after 15 seasons following the 2015-16 campaign. He took a year off and took some time to think. Did he want to coach again? Did he want to do TV? He tried the latter, and was pretty good at it, but “I didn’t think that would fulfill me,” he said. And so it was back to coaching, but this time on a much different stage.

Flint spent three seasons working on Archie Miller’s staff at Indiana before joining up with his old friend John Calipari in 2020. He’d worked under Calipari at UMass from 1989 to 1996 before taking over the Minutemen program, the job he held before coming back home in 2001 to coach Drexel, where he won four conference coach of the year awards.

This coaching thing is basically all Flint knows. The Southwest Philadelphia native and former Episcopal Academy standout has been in Division I hoops every season except 2016-17 since he graduated from St. Joseph’s in 1987, the year he made the all-Atlantic 10 team.

Being Kentucky’s associate head coach has plenty of perks, but Flint said he misses “being the person who’s in charge, coaching the game.”

Calipari knows as much. Flint said he’s had a few interviews and opportunities in recent years and is hoping for more.

“You never want to end the way I ended it,” he said. “I think I’ve learned some things since then. I feel as though I could still do it. I’d like to prove it.”

Sure, UMass had reached the Elite Eight in 1995 and the Final Four in 1996 and, sure, Flint helped develop Marcus Camby into Marcus Camby, but these last seven seasons have been a crash course in what major college hoops is all about — no offense to Drexel.

“It’s more running a corporation than anything else,” Flint said.

Oh, yeah, Big Blue Nation is a different animal.

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Flint said he used to talk to Calipari every day, even when he wasn’t working for him. Calipari would go on and on about how every game at Kentucky was the Super Bowl.

“I’d be like, ‘Whatever, man,’ ” Flint said.

Then he got a front-row view of it all and ...

“It is like that,” Flint said. “That makes it exciting. But also, too, there’s a lot of pressure in that respect.”

That pressure is dialed up this week. Third-seeded Kentucky opens its NCAA Tournament bid on Thursday night vs. No. 14 Oakland (of Auburn Hills, Mich.) in the South Regional in Pittsburgh — 12 miles southeast of Calipari’s hometown of Moon Township.

The Wildcats, ranked 12th in the Associated Press poll, haven’t reached the second weekend of the tournament since 2019. They finished the regular season winning seven of eight before losing to Texas A&M in the SEC tournament quarterfinals.

Asked about whether winning a national championship was something he is “chasing,” Flint said he knew how lucky he was to coach in a Final Four in 1996. “There’s a lot of people who go through their entire careers and never sniff it,” he said. This time around would be a lot different. The game has evolved plenty in the last 28 years, not the least of the differences being that the 1996 championship weekend marked the last time it was in a normal NBA-sized arena. This year’s version is at State Farm Stadium, where the Arizona Cardinals play and where the Eagles, Flint’s favorite team, played in the Super Bowl last year.

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Then there’s the difference between UMass and Kentucky, where, as Calipari said, every game is the Super Bowl.

“They say there’s no run like a Kentucky run to a Final Four,” Flint said. “Well, let’s do it. I want to get that feeling. Let’s go on a run and see how it is.”

He’d have a big part in it all if it happens. There’s a line in Flint’s biography on Kentucky’s team website. It says: “After a season as an assistant coach, Flint will take on an increased role off the court in helping head coach John Calipari run the program.”

Flint laughed when presented with the phrasing.

“I don’t know what that means,” he said. Flint is involved in the game-planning, talking to other assistants, making sure everything is organized, recruiting, “a little bit of everything,” he said.

Then there’s what’s maybe his most valuable role: Calipari Whisperer.

No one on staff has known and worked with Calipari as long as Flint.

The other Philly-area guys at Kentucky — freshmen D.J. Wagner, Justin Edwards, and Aaron Bradshaw — have leaned on that fact.

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“When they get confused with Cal, they come ask me,” Flint said. “That’s one of my jobs right there. Not just with the players, the staff, too.”

“It’s a lot,” Edwards said. “Coach Cal says a lot of stuff. He’s so fast-paced I’ll be having to ask Coach Bru, ‘What is he talking about?’ ”

Flint became an honorary Midwesterner at Indiana, now an honorary Southerner in Lexington. Does he miss home?

“Come on, man,” he said.

He misses being able to walk places, the simple pleasure of walking out the front door and going around the corner for a soda. He misses his Eagles and Phillies and Sixers. He spends most Sundays in the basketball facility “talking about my Birds.”

Coming back East for that next head-coaching job isn’t a prerequisite, Flint said.

“Once I moved to Indiana, I realized I could live anywhere,” he joked.

He can still coach anywhere, too. He’s just waiting for the call.