When Kentucky faces Connecticut in Wednesday night’s EA Sports Maui Invitational championship game, head coach John Calipari will be coaching against the one that got away.That one, UConn point guard Kemba Walker, has been the early season storyline of the college basketball season, scoring 18, 42, 31 and 30 points, respectively, to lead a young, upstart UConn team to a 4-0 start.Calipari said he recruited Walker out of Rice High School in Bronx, N.Y., but didn’t put a full-court recruiting press on him because he didn’t realize just how good he was.”Normally I can see something and I say, yes, let’s go with it, this is the guy,” Calipari said following UK’s 74-67 win over No. 13/11 Washington.  “I missed it in him. I told him last year in the warm-up (in the game in Madison Square Garden), I said, ‘I missed on you. No question I missed on you.’ “Walker was ranked No. 14 in the final 2008 Rivals.com recruiting class. Asked if it was Walker’s 6-foot-1 stature that led Calipari to pass, Calipari pointed out that he signed eventual NBA Rookie of the Year Tyreke Evans instead.”It’s not that I passed on him,” Calipari said. “It wasn’t like Kemba said I’ve come (down to Connecticut and Memphis). I think what I did was we were recruiting a bunch of guys then. I think we got Tyreke, who is pretty good, too. But I went specifically to look at him because I like his high school coach, think he’s a great guy. I went and looked at him and I said he’s good. He was playing in a slippery gym in Pittsburgh somewhere, I believe. “I think Jim (Calhoun) did a great job recruiting him, but it was like I didn’t realize how good he really was. And everybody — his coach told me you have no idea how good this kid is. Like I said, I made a mistake on that one. No question, he’s terrific.”Walker is averaging 30.3 points in four games this year for the Huskies, including a 29-point second-half effort in UConn’s first-round win over Wichita State and the go-ahead jumper in the upset of No. 2 Michigan State on Tuesday night. Walker scored 12 points and dished out six assists in last year’s UK-UConn game in the SEC/Big East Invitational.Expect Kentucky guard DeAndre Liggins to guard Walker in the championship game.Despite the recruiting miss, Calipari looks to have secured his third straight No. 1 class for the 2011 year.

Wednesday’s championship game is slated to start at 10 p.m. ET on ESPN.