Rick Pitino and John Calipari will meet Saturday for the fifth time in the NCAA Tournament. The first was in Philly.

The nicknames and comparisons followed John Calipari wherever he went. He was “The next Rick Pitino” or “Rick Pitino’s clone,” and it was time to have some fun. It was the day before Calipari’s Massachusetts Minutemen met Pitino’s Kentucky Wildcats in the 1992 Sweet 16 at the Spectrum, and Calipari brought a prop with him to his press conference.

“For the media, you guys really want to say I look like Rick Pitino, so I’m going to help you … with this,” Calipari said as he reached for something under the table, according to a Los Angeles Times story.

It was a cutout of Pitino’s face, and Calipari put it in front of his own.

“You have any questions for Rick?” he joked.

Thirty-three years later, the frenemies meet again. Pitino’s second-seeded St. John’s takes on Calipari’s 10th-seeded Arkansas on Saturday afternoon in Providence, R.I. It will mark the fifth meeting between the two Hall of Fame coaches, only Mike Krzyzewski and Tom Izzo (six) have more tournament showdowns. The record is even at 2-2.

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Call Saturday a grudge match, but it all started in Philly. That 1992 game was the first tournament meeting between the coaches and second overall. Kentucky beat UMass earlier that season, the first of what has now reached 23 total meetings, which their stints as NBA coaches, between Calipari and Pitino, a series Calipari leads, 13-10.

Calipari had UMass, Pitino’s alma mater, in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 30 years. Pitino, in his third season leading the Wildcats, had Kentucky as a top-10 team. For a while, it played out exactly how it was supposed to, Pitino’s team rolling over Calipari’s Atlantic 10 upstart.

Kentucky led by 21 at one point, the same margin it defeated UMass by earlier in the season at Rupp Arena. But Calipari’s Minutemen had a run in them, and that lead was cut to two with six minutes to go. The Spectrum was roaring when controversy struck.

Maybe The Shot — Christian Laettner’s epic buzzer-beater to lead Duke over Kentucky in the Elite Eight at the Spectrum — never happens if referee Lenny Wirtz doesn’t call Calipari for a technical foul for being out of the coach’s box. But Wirtz blew his whistle from the opposite side of the court, much to the dismay of Calipari.

“I wasn’t out of the box, and if I was, it was by inches,” Calipari later said in an interview for a UMass basketball documentary. “In the Spectrum, they had a configuration of colors that looked like lines. He truly thought I was way out of the box, and I wasn’t.”

The Wildcats ripped off a 6-0 run to extend their lead to eight and never looked back. Jamal Mashburn finished with 30 points in Kentucky’s 87-77 win. But if it wasn’t already, a rivalry officially was underway.

The teams met again four years later in the Final Four in East Rutherford, N.J., Pitino’s team again getting the upper hand en route to a national championship. It took Calipari 16 years and taking over at Kentucky to finally get revenge. In the 2012 Final Four, his Wildcats beat Pitino’s Louisville on their way to a national title. They met again two years later in the Sweet 16, and Calipari’s team again won.

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A lot has changed since then. Pitino was expatriated from the sport after being fired from Louisville in 2017. He coached in Greece before coming back to the college game at Iona and now St. John’s. Calipari, meanwhile, surprisingly left Kentucky for Arkansas last offseason.

It is easily the game on Saturday’s slate with the highest profile.

Quick, someone get Calipari his Pitino prop.