John Calipari and Rick Pitino, left, took center stage Saturday in Providence as Arkanas State eliminated St. John's. (AP photo)

ROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — John Calipari is heading back to the Sweet 16 after sending a second straight Hall of Famer home from the NCAA Tournament’s “Region of Coaches.”

One game after knocking out good friend Bill Self and the Kansas Jayhawks, Calipari’s 10th-seeded Arkansas Razorbacks beat longtime nemesis Rick Pitino and St. John’s 75-66 on Saturday.

That earned Calipari an especially sweet 16th trip to the Sweet 16, with his fourth school. And, perhaps more deliciously, it ended Pitino’s chances of a long March Madness run with his second-seeded Red Storm.

“Rick did a great job with his team all year,” Calipari said. “If they made a few shots, they would probably beat us. We were fortunate to get out.”

Pitino and Calipari have crossed paths for almost 50 years, with a rivalry that peaked when Calipari was at Kentucky, where Pitino had won an NCAA title, and Pitino was down the road in Louisville. Although the two Hall of Famers insist they have no ill will toward one another, they are most definitely not friends.

The coaches shared a polite pregame handshake and met at center court when it was over, with the Arkansas’ fans chants of “Wooo pig sooie!” finally heard over the Pitino-loving crowd.

“They outplayed us. They deserve to move on and we don’t,” Pitino said. “That’s what March Madness is all about. No matter how good a regular season you have, you play this way, you’re going to get beat.”

The scoreboard: Calipari is 17-13 against Pitino, including the six NBA matchups they split. Cal is now 3-2 against his elder in the NCAA Tournament; in fact, the Arkansas coach entered this year’s brackets with 56 March Madness wins, tied for the most among active coaches with Michigan State’s Tom Izzo. Both are still in the field.

Calipari has now taken UMass, Memphis, Kentucky and Arkansas to the Sweet 16. Pitino made it with Providence, Kentucky and Louisville, but never got out of the first weekend with Boston University, Iona or — so far — St. John’s.

But Pitino has two national championships — with Kentucky and Louisville — to one for Calipari.

“You know, he’s on Chapter 2 of his new book and we’re on Chapter 1,” Calipari said this week. “As a matter of fact, we’re probably on the first few pages of the chapter. It’s both of us writing another story and being able to come back here.”

Calipari led the Wildcats to the 2012 national title — 16 years after Pitino won in Lexington — but after a five-year span in which the Wildcats won just one March Madness game, he defected to Arkansas to start fresh.

Beset by early injuries, the Razorbacks lost their first five games in an unprecedentedly deep Southeastern Conference before earning their way into the NCAA Tournament after missing just one year.

“We had a long, up-and-down season,” said Arkansas freshman Billy Richmond III, who scored 16 points on Saturday. “We all came together, put our egos to the side and became one heartbeat.”

Calipari tried to get in good with the fans in Providence by talking about all the Italian restaurants he’s hit on Federal Hill — ” under the pineapple,” in the local parlance. But that was a losing battle this weekend: Whatever split there might be in Kentucky over their popularity, Providence is all Pitino.

The 72-year-old New Yorker remains beloved in the city where he led the Friars to the 1987 Final Four. He continued to vacation in tony Newport for years, even as he climbed the coaching ladder, slid to the bottom, and started his way back up again.

Although Arkansas led most of the game, the Pitino fans outshouted the Razorback backers, rising to a thunderous cheer when Zuby Ejiofor responded to a flagrant foul with a rim-shaking dunk. Big East Player of the Year RJ Luis Jr. followed with a steal and a dunk of his own to tie it 24-all, and the crowd sent St. John’s into a timeout with a chant of “Let’s go, Johnnies!”

Arkansas led by as many as 13 in the second half and still had an eight-point edge before the Johnnies cut it to 62-60 with 6:11 to play. But Pitino, who has built his career on full-court defense and 3-point shooting, could only summon one of them when he needed it.

St. John’s shot 2 for 22 from 3-point range — Arkansas was barely better, at 2 for 19 — and the Red Storm missed six straight from beyond the arc in the final minutes.

“We thought we were championship-driven in our minds, but I have been disappointed before with this,” Pitino said. “I don’t mind going out with a loss, I just hate to see us play that way offensively. It’s just a bitter pill to swallow with that type of performance.”

NO. 1 AUBURN 82, CREIGHTON 70

Auburn coach Bruce Pearl said a trip to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament was no sure thing, and experienced Creighton made his top-seeded team work for it before the Tigers found their defensive mojo in the second half and closed out the ninth-seeded Bluejays to reach the Sweet 16.

Tahaad Pettiford scored 16 of his 23 points after halftime and Chad Baker-Mazara added 17 points for Auburn, which held Creighton scoreless for more than six minutes during a 10-0 second-half run. Pettiford scored six points during that burst to push the Tigers to a 68-54 lead.

The No. 1 overall seed in the tournament, Auburn (30-5) moves on to the South Region semifinals in Atlanta next weekend, where it will face No. 5 seed Michigan. Pearl’s team was upset in the first round by Yale last year and he had not taken Auburn past the second round since it reached its only Final Four in 2019. This time, his goal is the Tigers’ first-ever national title.

TEXAS TECH 77, DRAKE 64

Darrion Williams scored a season-high 28 points, JT Toppin had 25 points and 12 rebounds, and No. 3 seed Texas Tech dominated No. 11 seed Drake in the paint.

Elijah Hawkins added 16 points for the Red Raiders (27-8), who denied the Bulldogs their first Sweet 16 trip in more than five decades and will play No. 10 seed Arkansas in the West Region semifinals Thursday night in San Francisco.

“Our guys were so composed and so tough,” Texas Tech coach Grant McCasland said, “and that was a huge part of the win.”

Bennett Stirtz scored 21 points and Daniel Abreu had 15 for the Bulldogs (31-4), who were outscored 50-20 inside by the bigger, stronger Red Raiders, and had their eight-game winning streak come to an end.

MICHIGAN 91, TEXAS A&M 79

Michigan is going back to the Sweet 16 a year after a 24-loss season, using Roddy Gayle’s surge and a surprising advantage on the boards to trounce Texas A&M.

Gayle scored 21 of his season-high 26 points in the second half to help the restocked Wolverines overcome a 10-point deficit and advance to Atlanta to face Auburn in the South Region.

They got there by beating the Aggies at their own game.

No. 4 seed Texas A&M entered the day as the nation’s top offensive rebounding team, but the fifth-seeded Wolverines pulled down 16 offensive boards to the Aggies’ 15 and they outrebounded them 48-39 overall.

PURDUE 76, MCNEESE 62

Trey Kaufman-Renn had 22 points and 15 rebounds, and Purdue used a fast start to roll in the second round.

Fletcher Loyer added 15 points. C.J. Cox finished with 11 points for the Boilermakers (24-11), who advanced through the Midwest Region to the Sweet 16 for the second straight season.

Purdue will meet the winner of top-seeded Houston and eighth-seeded Gonzaga in the regional semifinal. In his 16 NCAA Tournament appearances with the Boilermakers, coach Matt Painter is now headed to his eighth Sweet 16.

BYU 91 WISCONSIN 89

BYU withstood a ferocious charge from Wisconsin’s John Tonje to hold off the Badgers for a victory that sends the program to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 2011 — the days of Jimmer Fredette.

Tonje finished with 37 points, including eight during a desperate comeback down the stretch. But trailing by two, he shot a fadeaway air ball just before the buzzer that allowed the Cougars to escape.

Tonje was the first player to crack 30 points this year in March Madness.

“We felt like we couldn’t stop them at all in the second half, and in that last timeout, man, we just looked each other in the eye and said all we’ve got to do is get one stop, that’s it,” BYU coach Kevin Young said.

Richie Saunders had 25 points and seven rebounds for the sixth-seeded Cougars, who will play Alabama or St. Mary’s next Thursday in Newark at the East Regional.

HOUSTON 81, GONZAGA 76

LJ Cryer matched a career high with 30 points, including two free throws with 14.2 seconds left, and No. 1 seed Houston held on to beat eighth-seeded Gonzaga to reach the Sweet 16 for the sixth straight NCAA Tournament.

J’Wan Roberts added 18 points and Milos Uzan made two last free throws with 2.1 seconds left, giving the Cougars (32-4) their 15th consecutive win and pushing them into a regional semifinal against No. 4 seed Purdue on Friday night in Indianapolis.

Houston also ended Gonzaga’s run of nine straight Sweet 16s, which had been the longest active streak in the nation.

“It’s not just winning the game,” Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson said. “It’s beating a great program like Gonzaga.”

The Bulldogs (26-9) trailed 76-67 with just over 2 minutes to go when Graham Ike made two free throws to start their comeback bid, and most of it wound up coming at the foul line. And when Uzan turned the ball over and Khalif Battle made two free throws of his own, the Bulldogs had pulled to 77-76 with 21 seconds remaining.