SantaFeToday.com Santa Fe’s Hometown News
By Arnie Leshin
Rick Pitino is really wearing the years.
Now, after head coaching college basketball at six different schools and pausing to coach some in the National Basketball Association, he’s taking over the reigns at good old St. John’s, which is a long way from its National Invitational Tournament championships.
Yes, those were the good old days for the Redmen, the Johnnies, now as the Red Storm, it’s banking on the success of the now 70-year-old Pitino, who bowed out of this season after a 87-63 shellacking by his 13th-seeded Gaels against No. 4 UConn in the first round of March Madness.
So with St. John’s firing head coach, Mike Anderson, after four seasons, in stepped Pitino, whose son, Richard, is currently head coach the University of New Mexico men. Pappa Pitino actually grew up in Long Island not far from the St. John’s campus in the borough of Queens.
But once upon a time was big time for then head coach Lou Carnesecca’s Redmen. Upon the long-time mentor, the program was a power back in the mid 80s.
That was then, then is now when the school hasn’t won an NCAA tournament over the last two decades or even reached the Big East semifinals since 2000. In fact, the Red Storm has made only three NCAA tourney appearances over two decades, the most recent in 2019 under former star Chris Mullin.
Yes, it was Mullin, Kenny and Bobby McIntyre, Alan Seiden, Billy Paultz, Gus Alfieri, Tony Jackson, and a number of others who filled the trophy case, and now Pitino gets the tough task of reversing the program.
He will have to work through several conference reconfigurations, St. John’s has fallen behind Big East foes with similar profiles such as Villanova, Providence and Seton Hall.
Providence, by the way, has parted ways with successful head Cooley, who after 13 seasons has signed on to become head at Georgetown after the Hoyas recently fired their best-ever player Patrick Ewing as head coach after four losing seasons.
As for Rick, he has won national championships with Kentucky in 1996 and Louisville in 2013. He has been to seven Final Fours.
He has a .740 winning percentage in 35 seasons as a head college coach. Along with Kentucky and Louisville, he has also guided Boston University (1993) and Iona (2021, 2023) to the NCAA Tournament. He went 64-22 in three years with the Gaels. He endured only one losing college campaign, 13-14 at BU in 1980-81.
With the Knicks and Celtics, he brought a division title to New York, and a failed stretch, no playoff, with Boston.
He was dismissed at Louisville in 2017 following an FBI investigation into college basketball corruption led to NCAA violations.
It was the third scandal, professional and personal, in an eight-year period with the Cardinals, although Pitino was later exonerated in the FBI case.
In the surprising Providence season he coached in 1987, he took the Friars to the Final Four, but winning the 2013 title at Louisville was later vacated by the NCAA after an investigation found that an assistant coach paid escorts and exotic dancers to entertain players and recruits in campus dorms, then later officially returned.
Pitino said he hopes to coach for 12 more years, “But I’ll take six or seven,” he added.
