SAN ANTONIO -- The answer was pure John Calipari.

Flippant, in a word.

"I don't think Ben [Howland] is that bad," Calipari said, grinning an evil grin.

That was in response to a question about a Los Angeles Times column Saturday that suggested there was going to be only one real coach on the floor for the UCLA-Memphis national semifinal game that night.

"One coach runs distinct, detailed, plotted plays. One coach just runs," Bill Plaschke of the Times wrote.

"Howland will be the one coaching. Calipari will be the one cheering.

"Howland is a concoctor of plays. Calipari is a collector of players."

If you didn't know better, you would have thought Michel Therrien was coaching the Memphis team.

This must hurt Calipari. Anybody who knows him -- and plenty do in Pittsburgh because he's from Moon Township and was an assistant at Pitt under Paul Evans -- will tell you he has a big ego. His Memphis club crushed UCLA, 78-63, to advance to the national championship game tonight against Kansas, yet few are calling him a great coach. More are saying he beat UCLA and has Memphis at 38-1 only because he has vastly superior players.

How can that not sting Calipari? No matter what he said yesterday?

"There's one trophy that I'm striving for," Calipari insisted. "I've been national coach of the year. That's fine. I want the national title for this team and [Memphis]. And if it's, yeah, they won it, but he can't coach, I'll do seven back flips with one [bad] hip coming off the floor. I swear I will."

Wouldn't you love to see that?

It's unfair and inaccurate, really, the perception that Calipari is somehow inferior to Howland and so many other coaches. For one thing, in the college game, the coach is both the coach and general manager. Should a guy be punished because he's a terrific recruiter?

"John is so good at it he could sell you a bridge if he wanted to," Calipari's high school coach at Moon, Bill Sacco, said last week.

Even in that regard, Calipari has his doubters. Cynics will tell you they aren't sure he recruits on the up-and-up. His Massachusetts team had to vacate its 1996 Final Four trip because star player Marcus Camby accepted gifts and money from sports agents. But Calipari was never tied to the wrongdoing, and his teams haven't been on probation.

"We've had three McDonald's All-Americans in my eight years [at Memphis]," Calipari said. "We have teams now in the country that have seven, eight McDonald's All-Americans."

Rough translation:

I must be doing something right as a coach.

That doesn't mean Calipari doesn't have fabulous athletes at Memphis, a bunch headed by lights-out freshman point guard Derrick Rose, who almost certainly will be the No. 1 or No. 2 player picked in this summer's NBA draft. "This kid is ridiculous. He's so fast," Calipari said. "He's a unique program-changer, probably, in my opinion, at all levels."

But it's not as if Calipari just rolls a ball out for his team and lets the fellas play.

"Cal's good," Kansas coach Bill Self said. "That can be lost a little bit, because he's flamboyant and he's a terrific recruiter. But he can really coach."

UCLA guard Darren Collison didn't come out and say Calipari outcoached the more esteemed Howland Saturday night, but he did acknowledge, "He really did a good job scheming us."

Calipari's defense limited UCLA center Kevin Love -- the Pac-10 player of the year -- to a quiet 12 points and nine rebounds. It's not just that Love had one basket in the second half. He had only one assist in the game despite being a terrific post passer.

Offensively, Calipari took advantage of the mismatch that Rose and guard Chris Douglas-Roberts had with the smaller Collison, who had to guard one or the other. The instructions were to post up Collison at every opportunity. Rose and Douglas-Roberts combined for 53 points.

Calipari said he doesn't burden his players with hour-long film study or 30-page scouting reports. "I just want them to play," he said.

He'll call plays from time to time -- Douglas-Roberts' ferocious dunk Saturday night off a pass from Antonio Anderson on a baseline backdoor cut was scripted -- but the word he uses to describe the Memphis dribble-drive offense is "unleashed."

"Every one of them knows that they have the ability to take the ball to the basket," Calipari said. "But the biggest thing is that, whenever they drive, they know where everybody is. And there are reads off it. ...

"There's more freedom for them to make choices. Now, you have to count on your team to be unselfish and you have to count on your team being able to make good decisions on the run. I know I can count on my guys."

Do you think maybe Calipari's players love playing for him?

"Making the decision to go to Memphis was the best decision of my life," Douglas-Roberts said. "I needed a style of play like this in order to excel."

Clearly, that's enough for Calipari, that his players are having fun and that they've been extraordinarily successful.

Maybe he has it right, after all.

Being called a great coach is good, but being called a champion is better.

That champion thing lasts forever.