Rick Pitino and John Calipari have been lumped together so often over the years that they're virtual Siamese twins in the eyes of some basketball fans.

The comparisons are easy: Salesmen, paisans and fashion plates who rose to prominence and dominance in college basketball by the mid-1990s. Pitino's biggest obstacle to his 1996 national title at Kentucky was Calipari's Massachusetts team in the national semifinals. Four years earlier, the pair met in the 1992 Sweet Sixteen, where UK took out the first of five straight UMass teams to reach the NCAAs under Cal.

C-USA Projections

Here are ESPN.com's Conference USA projections and previews of each team: AMERICAN 1. Marquette 2. Cincinnati 3. Louisville 4. Charlotte 5. Saint Louis 6. DePaul 7. East Carolina NATIONAL 1. Memphis 2. TCU 3. South Florida 4. Tulane 5. Houston 6. Southern Miss 7. UAB All-C-USA Team G: Reece Gaines Lousiville, Senior G: Dwyane Wade Marquette, Junior G: Marque Perry Saint Louis, Senior F: Jason Maxiell Cincinnati, Soph C: Will McDonald South Florida, Senior Most Valuable Player Reece Gaines, Louisville Newcomer of the Year Robert Jackson, Marquette Freshman of the Year Rodney Carney, Memphis

Then, both took disastrous, humbling stabs at pro ball, Pitino with the Celtics and Calipari with the Nets. After that they returned to college ball and landed in middle America to resurrect a pair of proud but tattered programs. In the same league, even.

But the contrasts might be more substantial, at least as they relate to the game itself: Pitino coached with Hubie Brown; Calipari with Larry Brown. Pitino loves frenetic basketball; Calipari's style is more deliberate. Pitino's best teams barrage opponents with 3-pointers; Calipari's 1992 Sweet Sixteen team at UMass was led by a shooting guard -- shooting guard, mind you -- named Jim McCoy whose range did not extend beyond 18 feet.

Their rebuilding approach is different as well. Where Calipari came to Memphis and swung for the fences with the nation's biggest recruits right away, Pitino has taken a slightly more patient approach. (We say slightly, because Rick Pitino is anything but patient.)

The results of those divergent approaches leaves the two men in very different positions heading into this season.

At Memphis, Calipari's proposed rapid rebuild is starting to look like most construction jobs: late and over budget. To date the school has paid Calipari a fortune for a pair of NIT appearances.

Not that there's anything wrong with the NIT ... if you're South Florida. This is Memphis and John Calipari we're talking about, a marriage of grandiose expectation on both sides.

The DaJuan Wagner recruiting gambit did not pay off as anticipated -- and Juanny isn't the only key part no longer in Memphis. (Paging Kelly Wise, Chris Massie and Scooter McFadgon ... come in, please.) This is only Calipari's third year with the Tigers, and the roster already has gone through significant churn. Massie isn't eligible until at least mid-December. The top three scorers from last year are missing, and so is the anticipation of a big season.

At Louisville, Pitino has not signed a Wagner-level recruit. Instead, he brought in five players who offer a mix of immediate help and long-haul potential: 6-10 Kentucky transfer Marvin Stone, who will be eligible in mid-December; junior-college transfers Kendall Dartez (center) and Prileu Davis (point guard); and high schoolers Taquan Dean (combo guard) and Francisco Garcia (wing man).

Put it this way: Nobody in that group is talking one-and-done to the NBA except Stone, who runs out of eligibility. And only Stone is expected to step in and become an immediate starter.

	With just enough role players around him this season, Reece Gaines could lead the Cardinals to the top of C-USA.

Combine them with what Pitino has coming back, and his second year at Louisville could be the breakthrough that Memphis missed on in Year Two with Cal. A group that won 19 games last year is expected to take a significant step forward -- into the NCAA Tournament, quite likely into the Top 25, and some folks in the 'Ville are blue-skying about the school's first Sweet 16 run in six seasons.

"I'm as excited as I've been in a long, long time," Pitino said in October, when practice opened. Since then he's been tempering his rhetoric, but folks on the inside say that's because he believes this team has a chance to be very good.

He has the league's most complete player in Reece Gaines. He now has enough bodies to play the manic style he prefers, while still enduring the interior slugfests endemic to their division. And he has an experienced starting unit backed up by a bunch of precocious talent that will push the starters daily in practice.

If Stone comes through and a reliable point guard steps forward to keep Gaines at his more productive two-guard position, and if the Cards coalesce into a better defensive unit than they've shown early, they could take a Marquette-sized leap this year. Louisville is still a recruiting class or two away from being able to field a physically dominant team -- and Pitino is putting that together as we speak -- but it has enough to make a run at the Conference USA title.

Seven-time champion Cincinnati is vulnerable. No, really. Premature reports of the Bearcats' demise have been popping up for years, but if ever they are susceptible, it's in a year when only one player started more than three Division I games last year.

Charlotte coach Bobby Lutz doesn't share that view. "Until someone proves otherwise, this league goes through Cincinnati," he said, with history backing him up.

But no reign lasts forever, and Marquette and Louisville stand capable of ascending (though the Golden Eagles must prove they can thrive without heart-and-soul point guard Cordell Henry). Charlotte is never far from the hunt. Tulane could be poised for a big year. And, going on the theory that Calipari did a whole lot with less talent at UMass than he has now, it's impossible to throw Memphis completely out of the mix.

Regardless who comes forward from this league, it is high time someone came all the way forward. Not to say that Conference USA is still lacking the basketball respect it dreamed of when it was formed in 1995, but have you seen the polls?

The sprawling 14-team league could not get a team ranked higher than 19th (Marquette) in the preseason ESPN/USA Today coaches' poll. Meanwhile, four teams from the Big 12 and five from the Southeastern Conference are ranked higher.

That's a slap across the chops for a league that was supposed to have shoved its way into elite company by now.

You wonder how a league with Bob Huggins, Pitino, Calipari, Tom Crean and Lutz could rate so little love. Here's how: When you're 0-for-existence in producing Final Four teams and have only one Sweet 16 team in the last five NCAA Tournaments, you've still got some proving to do.

"I'd love to take the top five or six teams in this league and play one of those home-and-home challenges against any other league," said Charlotte coach Lutz. "I guarantee we would at least hold our own. But until some of our teams play deeper into March, that perception is going to hold."

"You have to go out and earn that respect in the tournament," Pitino said.

Rick might have the team to earn it this year.

Pat Forde of the Louisville Courier-Journal is a regular contributor to ESPN.com