NEW YORK – Maybe Dan Hurley could look back and laugh and admit it if, indeed, the appearance of Rick Pitino in the first round of the NCAA Tournament got his stomach churning like a plate of something fra diavolo.
“I didn’t have a lot of time to think about Rick Pitino,” Hurley said. “Having lost to New Mexico State and Maryland in the first round (the previous two years), but playing Iona and Rick certainly didn’t decrease the pressure on us in the first round, I’ll say that.”
Okay, let’s go with that. Rick Pitino, having moved on as he so often has, this time from Iona to St. John’s, certainly doesn’t decrease the pressure on the defending national champs or any other team in the Big East.
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“The film never lies, in terms of who you know you’re going up against,” Hurley said, “in terms of how well the other team is prepared. You see they have a philosophy that they play to and they’re not going to make a lot of mistakes. There are ways well-coached teams should look,”
Pitino needed no introduction Tuesday, nor even a reintroduction at Madison Square Garden on Big East Media Day, where the largest media horde in years, more than 200, gathered. He’s a Hall of Fame coach, one of the best to ever do it, especially if you discount, as his last two employers apparently have, some of the checkers on his past. He wins, wins big, and brings instant buzz and credibility everywhere he goes. And he has been everywhere coaches want to be, including the Knicks, Celtics and Kentucky.
St. John’s knew what it was getting into, and also knew what it needed. Pitino’s got the city talking about them again, buzzing about a double OT win over Rutgers in an exhibition game last weekend.
There was a line in an old gangster picture with which you may be familiar. One dinner guest asks if this restaurant in The Bronx has good Italian food and another says, “Try the veal, it’s the best in the city.”
New York scribes of a certain age sometimes appropriate that line, maybe substituting something less tasty for veal, to refer to days like this. Now Pitino, 71, may be a grandfather, but he is still “The Godfather” of conference media days, especially in New York, where he first served up his saucy fare in the city as Providence coach in the late 1980s, then later with Louisville, as both a Big East and American member. Three decades ago he rescued the Knicks from irrelevance, the very trick he is trying to pull off at The Garden now, reclaim it as St. John’s home.
So we were lined up three or four deep around Pitino, straining to get our recording devices close enough to pick up every morsel. Best in the city, again.
“It’s a ride down memory lane,” Pitino was saying. “St. John’s has fallen on hard times, in part because the competition is so great, and they had a difficult time recruiting locally. … For a New Yorker, growing up in Queens watching St. John’s, to end my career building St, John’s up to be a national power, it would be an incredible experience.”
When Pitino, resurfaced from exile, took Iona to the Tournament as MAAC champ, he found a UConn team that would not be easy to beat, unless it was somehow spooked out. To many, he was just the guy to do it.
“Coach (Hurley) obviously knew Rick was going to have a plan,” Donovan Clingan said. “Our staff worked up a better plan, they stuck to the scout in practice and emphasized how hard that team plays and how well-coached they were and we had to make sure we were on our stuff.”
Iona, the No. 13 seed, led No. 4 UConn, 39-37, at the half, the only team to do that in March. The Huskies then resolved to play a team, not a coach — which was the mental key to it — and outscored their first-round mid-major 50-24 in the second half, then took it all, just as Pitino had predicted.
The only way to kick-off media day!
pic.twitter.com/0tucfGte3H
— BIG EAST MBB (@BIGEASTMBB) October 24, 2023
“I’d watched them play a lot,” Pitino said. “And I was sitting there, getting ready for Selection Sunday and I thought we were going to play a No. 3 seed, and when it came out, I said ‘Holy (crap),’ I did not want that. We were the only team up at halftime. But after playing them in person, and watching their second unit come in, I thought they had national champion written all over them, and I told that to Danny walking off. ‘You can win a national championship. Good luck to you.’”
Pitino was so impressed by UConn’s depth that he targeted a piece of it in the transfer portal, getting guard Naheim Alleyne shortly after the parade.
“What worries me about my team, awesome young men, is the fact that all of them haven’t won big with the exception of Naheim,” Pitino said. “Most of them lost because they didn’t play great defense. Now, we have to change them into the mindset of winning, and playing great defense. Naheim and the Iona players have won, and understand defensively what it takes to win.”
Alleyne recently told reporters that Pitino doesn’t scream quite as much as Hurley. “He’s mic’d up,” Hurley said. “He doesn’t have to yell.”
No, Pitino certainly does not. His his record does that. He has 834 wins, counting those vacated by NCAA ruling, and a .740 winning percentage. The Big East, even without big football money pouring into coffers, still manages to attract top flight coaches, and even get them back, ala Pitino, Sean Miller at Xavier and Thad Matta at Butler, for second go-rounds.
“(Pitino) has made a challenging conference even better,” Miller said. “One of the best to ever do it.’
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Huskies fans love to jeer Pitino, knowing full well what a boogeyman he can be. So Pitino was right about them last March, and now he’s right back in his element, with at least two shots a year to beat UConn, with the ability to attract the same level of players, maybe start taking back the New York recruiting turf. Oh, yeah, Dec. 23 in Hartford, Feb. 3 in The Garden. Circle ’em. Appointment viewing.
As he he made his way rather jauntily out of the Garden, Pitino stopped to greet Geno Auriemma, who welcomed him back to the Big East and introduced him to Nika Muhl. When Auriemma sat down and saw the throng of reporters, he quipped, “You all must think this is Rick Pitino’s desk.”
Well, come to think of it, the veal’s not bad at Geno’s place, either.
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