LEXINGTON, Ky. — In what may or may not be the final act for Rick Pitino, the site is the perfect fit.
As of Tuesday, the former Kentucky basketball coach is the new basketball coach at St. John’s University. It’s the latest and possibly last stop for the 70-year-old Pitino, whose career has stretched from Boston University, to Providence, to the NBA’s New York Knicks, to Kentucky, to the NBA’s Boston Celtics, to Louisville, to Iona and now the New York school for the native New Yorker.
The landing spot is made to order. Once a basketball power, St. John’s hasn’t won an NCAA Tournament game since 2000. Meanwhile, Pitino has won most everywhere he’s been, and won big, with a pair of national championships on his resume, even if one was vacated.
The ride has been bumpy. That’s true. Pitino would most likely still be the coach at Louisville if not for a series of scandals. There was the humiliating Karen Sypher extortion scandal. There was the escorts-entertaining-recruits scandal that caused removal of the school’s 2013 title banner. Finally, there was the FBI probe scandal that caught Louisville in its dragnet. By that time, Pitino’s level of involvement didn’t matter as much as the fact that U of L officials had grown weary of the off-the-court headlines. He had to go.
After a sabbatical coaching in Greece, Pitino returned to the states to coach Iona, the New Rochelle, New York, school he said was to be his last stop. But, as Kentucky fans know, Rick says a lot things. Some true. Some not. Most are subject to change at a later date.
He stayed three years with the Gaels, going 64-22 with a pair of NCAA Tournament berths. On the one hand, the Pitino name brought more publicity to the basketball program and the school. On the other, Iona hoops wasn’t exactly destitute before his arrival. It had been to the NCAA Tournament four of the five years before he stepped on campus.
St. John’s is a vastly different story. The same program that reached the 1985 Final Four in Lexington has been to the Big Dance just five times since losing a 1999 regional final to Ohio State.
Since then, Mike Jarvis, Norm Roberts, Steve Lavin, Chris Mullin and Mike Anderson are coaches who tried and failed to make it work in the Big Apple. A curious hire in the first place, Anderson went 68-56 in four seasons at St. John’s which included a 30-46 Big East record and zero Big Dance bids.
Pitino is a better coach than that quintet of predecessors put together. He’s a better coach than most anyone. He’s one of, if not the best preparation coaches in the history of the game. If you can abide all the other stuff — the Pitino hyperbole, the double-talk, the volatility, the arrogance, the baggage — you know he’s going to win basketball games.
“It’s very simple,” former St. John’s coach Lou Carnesseca, now 98 years old, said this week of Pitino’s transgressions. “That’s why we have confessions.”
Here’s mine: I’ll be rooting for Rick to succeed. Why not? I’ve long advocated for Kentucky fans to let bygones be bygones. He broke Big Blue Nation’s heart by leaving, then stomped on it by going to U of L. But looking back, his eight-year run as Kentucky coach remains possibly the most consequential in the history of the program. At its peak, Pitino was more beloved than any UK coach since Adolph Rupp. Hands-down.
And for basketball purists, the man can coach. There’s never been any doubt about that.
Now he has a chance to tie a shiny bow on his career. He’s back in the Big East, back to a conference he took by storm in leading Providence to the 1987 Final Four. It was the achievement that first put Rick Pitino on the map.
Rescuing the Red Storm could really be his final act.
“St. John’s is going to be back,” Rick Pitino said Tuesday. “I guarantee that.”
