Rick Pitino makes a case as a goat trainer with St. John’s Basketball

On By Littum

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UCLA coach Mick Cronin joked during a press conference last week that if he had Rick Pitino’s money, “I would be on a private flight to Cabo right now.”

Well, Rick Pitino has Rick Pitino’s money and he’s not on a plane to Cabo. On the contrary: He is winning Big East in Year 2 at St. John’s.

As 72 years old, Pitino’s contemporaries are largely away from college basketball. Jim Boeheim talks about TV. Mike Krzyzewski makes a podcast. Roy Williams sits in the stands of North Carolina Games as a fan. Leonard Hamilton announced on Monday he is calling it a career.

And here is Pitino, by taking a sixth school to the NCAA tournament and perhaps making his case as the best college basketball trainer of all time.

St. John’s, ranked No. 10 in This week’s USA Today Sports Men’s Basketball Coaches PollBeat No. 11 Marquette 70-64 on Tuesday to establish a clear lead in the Big East regular season race. And it was classic Pitino, his team, falling.

When I saw the game on TV, it struck me that I can’t remember any part of my life as a sports fan that doesn’t include Pitino Coaching Big Games and being a relevant figure in March. I was just 12 years old when Pitinos Kentucky Wildcats lost against Christian Laettner and Duke on undoubtedly the most famous Summer beat in the NCAA tournament history.

Next month, I will celebrate my 45 -year birthday and Pitino brings another team to March Madness with a legitimate chance to make Final Four.

Sometimes you have to take a step back and appreciate the pure improbability of such a long, productive run. As much as university sports have evolved, as big as the generational gap has grown, one thing has not changed at all. Either way, Pitino will win – and win big – even as his contemporaries have mostly decided that they are unable to navigate in modern times.

For a guy who has won national championships in Kentucky and Louisville, getting St. John’s to 20-3 with a Big East Championship in sight.

And if you are an administrator at a larger conference school that had an open coaching job for the past five or six years and passed on the chance of hiring Pitino, you have to ask yourself: What did you do?

Yes, Pitino was fired in the fall of 2017, when the sport of college basketball was devoured for fear of a FBI study of illegal recruitment, which has, among other things, a bound Louisville recruiting Brian Bowen. And when he got on the heels of another scandal in Louisville, where a female escort claimed she was paid by an employee to have sex with recruits, it is obvious why Pitino should be fired and held in charge – even if it was never proven , that he was involved in or knowledge of these wrongdoing.

But just after the last four in 2019, I wrote that UCLA should hire Pitino, who had gone to Greece at that time to train a pro team in Athens. Yes, there were problems and endless controversy. But he had paid his fine and it was clear that he still had more to give.

The only school that was willing to give Pitino a chance was Iona, and he rewarded this faith with two NCAA tournament bids for three seasons.

Even then, it’s not like he was a hot item. College administrators considered him pretty much as too old, too toxic, too much of a news at a time when the sport was looking at a name, image and equality and the coaches of Pitino’s generation were heading for retirement.

Whoops. Hate to say that, but I told you.

Credit St. John’s to be ready to take advantage of the moment.

Throughout the 1980s romance around Johnnies and lured by playing in Madison Square Garden it has been a pretty terrible program with a clueless administration for a very long time. Over the past 20 years and five coaches, it has done the NCAA tournament only three times and never went beyond the 64 round. Last time St. John’s won a tournament game? It was 2000 – before someone on its list was born.

Now Johnnies is 20-3, after just winning their ninth in a row. Only a few teams in college basketball are on a more impressive stripe. Not only is St. John’s A Postseason Lock now, but it plays for the kind of seeds that could place it for a very, very deep race in March – even with a list that may not have a future NBA player.

New York City is invested. The garden rocks every night. Something special seems suddenly possible.

And only Pitino could have made it happen.

You can revive all controversy and personal embarrassment in his long life and career if you want, but none of these things are relevant to the bottom line here. Almost every great college trainer we have seen from Nick Saban to John Calipari has either lost a step or gone away as they have expected changes in the sport and their own level of hunger to continue.

Pitino, on the other hand, still pulls off miracles who are still turning around programs, still showing that he has a unique ability to draw the absolute best out of players who are hard and well -conditioned enough to play in his system.

And if he can somehow get a fourth school for Final Four – which suddenly looks like a realistic option – he will have an excellent case as the best coach in College Basketball’s history.