On the day last March when St. John’s formally announced Rick Pitino had been hired to run the men’s basketball program, it seemed, at first, unnecessary for athletic director Mike Cragg to bother reciting the numbers that encapsulate the coach’s career achievements. He’s Rick Pitino. Within the boundaries of the game, he is as famous as one could be, and about as accomplished.
Cragg wasted no time, though, subliminally or not, getting to the one figure that defined why the Red Storm again were presenting a new basketball coach to the public. “Fifty-four NCAA Tournament wins,” Cragg said, which some might have hard putting into context in another venue.
Is 54 NCAA Tournament wins a lot for a coach? How many did John Wooden have, or Adolph Rupp, or Tom Izzo or Bill Self?
At St. John’s, none of that matters.
The Red Storm have won a single NCAA Tournament game this century.
Yeah, when you put it that way, 54 March Madness wins is a boatload.
Pitino has earned 28 victories, all at Louisville, since St. John’s defeated Northern Arizona in the 2000 NCAAs. If we count interims, the Red Storm have gone through seven head coaches since they last advanced in March. They’ve endured 17 losing conference seasons. As the competition in the Big East continued to escalate, with Connecticut on its way toward the 2023 NCAA Championship and Xavier reinvigorated with Sean Miller and Creighton rolling with Greg McDermott and Georgetown about to reinvent itself with Ed Cooley, St. John’s needed a sure thing.
There are no locks in sports. Ted Williams hit .254 once. John Elway’s 1990 Denver Broncos went 5-11. LeBron James’ Lakers are under .500. But Rick Pitino is a lock. He coaches your team, way more often than not, you win.
So it is no surprise to find St. John’s where it is today: In the upper half of the Big East, firmly in the projected NCAA Tournament field according to the Bracket Matrix consensus. It is approaching the next chapter in a burgeoning rivalry with UConn -- Saturday at noon on Fox -- at the Mecca of the sport known as Madison Square Garden – that only can help extricate the Red Storm from their 20-year malaise.
Let’s be honest: This is where Pitino belongs.
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He has been as New York as it can get since he was born in the city and raised on Long Island, and he did get to return to college coaching out in New Rochelle at Iona the past three years, but he hasn’t had a Broadway stage like this since those two years in the late 1980s when he was in charge of the New York Knicks.
Pitino is embracing this circumstance with a degree of – I was going to say comfort, but that’s not a word that fits in any description of him – engagement that always seemed a smidge elusive during his Louisville days.
Fans of opposing teams can cite the “Breaking Cardinal Rules” scandal that led to the NCAA vacating the 2013 Louisville championship or the 2017 allegations that ultimately resulted in his dismissal. Multiple coaches who worked for him insisted rules violations were the antithesis of his approach to running the program. But it appeared he spent more time away from the campus – at a home in Miami, for instance -- than is typical of a high-major coach. The person who once obsessed about every detail wasn’t always around to check.
That does not appear to be an issue now. He agreed to a five-part video podcast assembled by Fox Sports and hosted by broadcaster John Fanta. He began lobbying through the media to move next season’s St. John’s home game against UConn to Carnesecca Arena, which would cut down on the volume of Huskies fans who could take the train to Manhattan and cheer for their team.
“It’s definitely not a joke,” Pitino said. “I have my reasons.”
UConn coach Dan Hurley responded in exactly the manner required to make a simple venue change into a story, and to animate the rivalry.
“They’re trying to do what they need to do to build their program up,” Hurley said, according to the New York Post. “But anyone not named Duke, Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky – I’m probably going to miss a couple here – they’re all going for where we’re at. We’ve had unbelievable success here in basketball. There are programs who haven’t been to a Final Four, or haven’t been to the NCAA Tournament in 20 years, so there’s obviously a lot of punching up.”
The Red Storm last were there in 2019, playing in Dayton in the First Four. They last were in the main draw in 2015. So, yeah, he was talking about St. John’s; his facts might have been a little fuzzy, but the Red Storm fit the description.
Perhaps that changes this year. Can you imagine being the guy who coaches his squad to a season worthy of an 8/9 game in the NCAAs and then discovers his first-round opponent has seven Final Fours and two NCAA titles on his resume?
Pitino has four double-figure scorers in his rotation, led by Joel Soriano and his 16.4 points (and 9.7 rebounds). The team is not elite at either end of the floor: 42nd in KenPom.com’s offensive efficiency stat, 41st on defense. But that means they’re solid at both.
Point guard Daniss Jenkins followed Pitino from Iona and has proven capable of running a Big East offense, with averages of 13.1 points and 5.8 assists. Soriano is the key to one of the best offensive rebounding squads in the country. Nine players average double-figure minutes.
Not every step Pitino has taken in constructing this St. John’s squad turned out to be wise. In that first press appearance nearly a year ago, Pitino declared many of the team’s returning players would not be, um, returning “because they’re not a good fit for me.” He made certain to exempt Soriano from that invitation to enter the transfer portal. Traditionalists were not enamored of this approach, but this is a new century of college athletics that demands astute personnel decisions and permits less patience with program advancement.
Several capable players departed, including guards Dylan Addae-Wusu for Seton Hall and Posh Alexander for Butler. But relatively hidden in the roster exits was a freshman reserve named A.J. Storr. He had averaged 8.8 points and shot 40 percent from 3-point range. And he was the sort of dynamic wing who had thrived with Pitino’s greatest teams, notably Derek Anderson and Ron Mercer with the 1996 NCAA champions at Kentucky. Storr now is averaging 16 points and 3.5 rebounds and trending toward first-team All-Big Ten selection at Wisconsin.
No one ever said Pitino was perfect.
He is, though, perfect for this job.
