How do you beat Rick Pitino, Iona? Ask Baker Dunleavy
Rick Pitino and Iona await Hurley and the Huskies in Albany
How do you beat Rick Pitino?
A Christian Laettner turnaround jumper at the buzzer is one way, but that was more than 30 years ago.
Don’t ask Kevin Ollie, whose 0-4 record as UConn men’s basketball coach vs. Pitino’s Louisville teams were all double-digit losses and included a 33-point blowout and an Ollie ejection.
You could ask Jim Calhoun, who beat Pitino in the Big East Tournament title game in 2011 to complete an amazing fivewins-in-five-nights run. But the two haven’t faced each other in over a decade and Calhoun is now retired.
For a more recent account on how to beat Piti
STORRS — UConn men’s basketball coach Dan Hurley smirked a little when the NCAA Tournament bracket was revealed Sunday evening.
The Huskies, the No. 4 seed in the West Region, open play Friday in Albany against 13th-seeded Iona.
Rick Pitino’s Iona. “Listen, it’s sports and it’s entertainment,” Hurley said. “This is all about creating. You have two different things going on. You have a group of people like myself, the coaches and the players. This consumes your whole life, the mission — winning, losing, succeeding, failing together. It’s your life, It’s everything.
“Then you also have the fans. We have a responsibility to give them what they want, which is dramatic games and story lines. Especially in March Madness.”
UConn-Iona is a lot of vowels and a lot of juice.
You have a coach in Hurley, 50, who while accomplished and established, feels the weight
Friday, 4:30 p.m. (TBS)
from above. The program’s four national championship banners hang on a wall, looming over the practice court. He feels pressure in the wake of recent shortcomings, too, with first-round upset losses in 2021 and 2022. If UConn doesn’t win at least a game in the NCAA Tournament this year, maybe two, it’s going to be a fidgety offseason in
Storrs.
And you have a coach in Pitino, 70, who’s been everywhere and done everything, coaching the Celtics and Knicks and winning national championships at Kentucky and Louisville before arriving at Iona in 2020. He is one of the best coaches of all time and his presence on the opposing sideline, even when leading a mid-major program, can cast a shadow the way Pat Riley did with the Lakers in the1980s.
Hurley is rebuilding what had become one of the top programs in the sport over the past threeplus decades.
Pitino is a legend who returned to the sideline for the final act of his Hall of Fame career.
Then again, Pitino has been mentioned as a candidate for the St. John’s job, so maybe Iona isn’t the final chapter, and maybe Friday’s game against Hurley is just the first of many brought on by the Big East.
What it is, for sure, is an occasion that UConn must be wired to handle prop