Pitino rises from ashes of scandal for rebirth at Iona
Rick Pitino pioneered use of the 3-point shot in college, and he used the first season of the shiny, new 19-feet, 9-inch toy to help Providence become the first six seed to reach the Final Four.
Pitino had already led Boston University to the NCAA Tournament several years earlier, but taking a second program with only pockets of success to March Madness made the sharp-dressed New Yorker one of the hottest coaching candidates in college or the NBA.
He also made a vow he would not keep. After Providence lost to Big East rival Syracuse in a 1987 national semifinal, Pitino declared: “I would never entertain coaching at any other college than Providence.”
Never is a mighty long time in college basketball, and that quote is good for a chuckle these days — except maybe in Rhode Island — because no coach has weaved his way through glamour jobs in the NBA and college quite like Pitino, except perhaps for Larry Brown. But while Brown has had similar highs (Final Fours, the Hall of Fame, hundreds of career wins), the lows for Pitino (sex scandals, FBI investigations, exile) are unique.
For better or worse, with his made-for-TV charisma and formula for quick fixes, Pitino is back in the tournament as arguably the most famous person in Indy on any line of the bracket.
That promise at Providence was forgotten about three months later when Pitino left to coach the Knicks. And 34 years later, Pitino is set to coach his record-tying fifth team in the NCAA Tournament. Pitino leads Iona (12-5) in Indianapolis for a first-round game Saturday against secondseeded Alabama, while the previous four schools he coached in the tournament are out.
Kentucky is not walking through that door. Louisville is not walking through that door.
Pitino, however, is here, with the eight designer suits he says he packed for Indianapolis as a motivational tool for the Gaels, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Tournament champs out of the New York suburbs.
“When you’re in a league where you’re one bid, and you lose and there’s no tournament, not even an NIT, the pressure is incredible and that’s something I hadn’t felt as a coach before,” Pitino said. “That was the first time.”
Pressure? Pitino could write a book on pressure, he’s already co-authored enough to rival J.K. Rowling, and a few chapters on this season would be a doozy. He navigated his first season with the Gaels in a pandemic, including a 51-day hiatus the school says sidelined them longer than any team in the country. Pitino, 68, even contracted the coronavirus, and the Gaels were forced to stop four times this season because of virus issues.
Pitino told his team not to complain, that shutdowns were a minor inconvenience compared to more than 538,000 dead from the disease. Asked about handling tough times this season, Pitino invoked dealing with the death of his brother-inlaw in the Sept. 11 attack on the World Trade Center as the true meaning of pushing through hardships in life.
The good times for Pitino at Iona, a private Catholic college in New Rochelle, N.Y., often come with a dredging of the past.
Is a tourney berth vindication for the embarrassing ending at Louisville, where he was fired in 2017 in a pay-for-play scandal? “Personally, I’ve got to make amends with my family if I’ve done things wrong,” Pitino said this week. “Professionally, they know what I’m all about. They know that nothing being said has any semblance of truth at all. They’re fine with that. We’re a family that is very strong together. We don’t pay attention to that.”