March Madness: Back home during the NCAAs, Calipari hopes Kentucky can replicate his blue-collar beginnings.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — John Calipari’s blue-collar roots still run deep.

Even now, nearly 40 years after the Calipari left western Pennsylvania for good to begin a head coaching career that’s made him a millionaire many times over, a national champion and a Hall of Famer, the lessons instilled in him at a young age growing up in Moon Township remain.

“You were taught, there’s nothing in this world that’s going to be given to you,” the longtime Kentucky coach said Wednesday. “You’re going to have to go take what you want, and if you don’t work, you will not eat.”

That inner hunger remains. Even now, six weeks past his 65th birthday, Calipari insists the drive that’s made him a somewhat rogueish winner wherever he’s gone remains fresh.

The trick these days is finding a way to impart that ethos down to a group of talented college kids who practice in top-flight facilities and are awash in name, image and likeness opportunities, some of them using Kentucky as a stopover on their way to the NBA.

Calipari believes the third-seeded Wildcats (23-9) have the work ethic to get through the next three weeks, as they face 14th-seeded Oakland (23-11) in the first round on Thursday. Perhaps more significantly, he believes his squad has depth.

Seven different Wildcats have scored at least 25 points this season, offering Calipari probably the most important tool in a coach’s motivational arsenal: choices.

“For a couple years, if one or two players played poorly, I didn’t have subs, you left them in and you end up losing,” Calipari was quoted as saying. “And I am not just talking about the NCAA tournament. Other games. If these two or three aren’t performing well, I’ll just play these five or six, and we’ll go with them.”

Perhaps, but it is also resulted in a wildly inconsistent season in which Kentucky could seem like one of the most spectacular teams in the country one night and then check out defensively the next.

After losing five of nine games in the middle of the season, the Wildcats went on a five-game winning streak that included a blowout win over Alabama and a road victory at Tennessee.

That momentum, however, slowed in the SEC tournament, where Texas A&M defeated Kentucky in the quarterfinals.

Calipari’s response: he had his players bowl.

“We split them up and let them compete and laugh and eat,” Calipari went on to say. “Now let’s regroup and get back after it.”

It’s been nine years since Kentucky reached the Final Four, and a dozen since the Wildcats cut down the nets at the end of the NCAA tournament, a lifetime in a program where success is only defined at the end of the season.

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The coach in the country is well aware of this. He’s trying his best to take the strain off his teammates.

“My job right now is to just, one: every year, make sure they’re playing their best basketball in March,” Calipari said in a statement. “The second step is to take it off of them and onto your own shoulders. Allow them to be youthful players who can play and have fun.

Maybe, but in some ways, the pressure is also a privilege. It’s one of the reasons freshman guard Reed Sheppard has always desired to play for the Wildcats. The son of Jeff Sheppard, who won a national title at Kentucky in 1998, and Stacey Sheppard, one of the school’s all-time greatest scorers, is well-versed in this.

The time of year when you play for his parents’ alma mater.