Latest trip clear proof Rick Pitino is survivor
Buried by scandal, veteran coach back with Iona
Never mind the embarrassing extortion trial or the stripper scandal or the FBI wiretap mess that exiled him to Greece in search of a basketball team to coach, any basketball team. Rick Pitino is back. Better than ever.
He’s the early talk of this NCAA men’s basketball tournament, the 68-year-old coach thrown a lifeboat by tiny Iona College and who repaid the favor by taking new players under a new system through chronic COVID-19 pauses — Pitino himself tested positive for the coronavirus — and who, as the No. 9 seed, somehow found a way to win the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament last week.
We say somehow, but you know how. The Gaels had Pitino, now just the third coach to take five different programs to the Big Dance, joining his former assistant and successor Tubby Smith and the perpetually underrated Lon Kruger.
No matter what you think of Pitino — good, bad, but never indifferent — the one thing we can all agree on is the man can coach. Always has, always will. He’s one of those take-his-and-beat-yours and take-yours-and-beat-his sort of coaches.
Pitino’s problem has always been the other stuff — the way as Kentucky coach he publicly flirted with every job imaginable; his failed tenure with the NBA’s Boston Celtics; his return to the college game by taking the head coaching job of Kentucky’s biggest rival; the various scandals at Louisville from Karen Sypher to the “entertainment parties” for recruits that cost the team its 2013 championship banner to his assistant coaches’ alleged violations uncovered by the FBI’s college basketball corruption investigation.
Pitino insists he knew nothing of the latter two problems but admits it was his program, thus his responsibility. And by the time the FBI scandal popped up in 2017, Louisville had finally had enough, cutting ties with him.
Unable to shake the bug, Pitino took a job coaching Panathinaikos in Greece, where he (of course) won a championship. Then, when Iona coach Tim Cluess stepped down, the New York school offered the job to Pitino.
At one point, the Gaels went 51 consecutive days without a game because of COVID-19 issues. Pitino said the team missed 60 practice days. They played just 13 regular-season games, going 8-5, and opened MAAC tournament play March 9 having not played since Feb. 20. In Atlantic City, with Pitino wearing his designer suits while the other coaches wore sweats, Iona won four games in four days, capped by the 60-51 victory over Fairfield for the title.
“When we won the championship in 2013, I told my sons, ‘I got 184 text messages after the game.’ … Last night, I had 364 text messages,” Pitino told Steve Serby, of the New York Post.
There’s a reason for the greetings. If you set all the other stuff aside, just as a basketball fan, you have to marvel at the man’s ability to teach, to prepare, to inspire a team. There’s something pure in that, something almost, well, nostalgic.
So, here we are again. Back in 1987, Pitino put himself on the map when his Providence Friars upset Wimp Sanderson and No. 2-seed Alabama in the NCAA tournament on the way to the Final Four. Now, Alabama is again a No. 2 seed and again facing Pitino, whose Gaels are the No. 15 seed, in the first round Saturday.
In 15 NCAA appearances, Iona has advanced only once past the first round, that being 1980 under Jim Valvano. The chances aren’t great Pitino will make it No. 2. If anything, Alabama’s Nate Oats now is much like Pitino back then, a brash young coach who plays an uptempo style that makes extensive use of the 3-point shot. Pitino vs. the Pitino influence.
Still, as this year has proven, you can’t count Pitino out.
Not now, not ever. The man can coach. And win. It’s why he’s still around.