Rick Pitino’s extended commute has St. John’s on road back to NCAA Tournament
The Johnnies are nearing the end of a weeklong break in the schedule, fresh off a blowout win against Villanova.
nypost.com
By Mike Vaccaro
Joanne Pitino has been there from the start, from the days and nights in high school when she would retrieve free throws under the basket at the St. Dominic’s High School gym, with the faint promise of a trip to the beach when her then-boyfriend decided he was done. For years, they have both told the stories of how that usually turned out.
“A lot of trips to Carvel instead,” she said with a laugh a few years ago.
This time, though, Joanne figured her husband had officially taken leave of his senses. It isn’t that she’s unaware of the signs that have buzzed around Rick whenever it seemed like he was targeted for a move; that’s been a part of the deal from the start, when Jim Boeheim famously interviewed him for an assistant’s gig at Syracuse the night of their wedding.
It’s just that after all the moves, after all the stops, he had finally earned about as comfortable a spot as the job allows its most ambitious practitioners. He was already in the Hall of Fame. He worked for bosses he liked at Iona, coached players he enjoyed, had an enthusiastic fan base that would’ve signed him up to be coach for life in New Rochelle.
The capper: Their house sits off the third green at Winged Foot in Mamaroneck, which is exactly 4.2 miles from the Iona campus. You can get there in 11 minutes by car. On nice days you can ride there by bike.
“The older you get,” Pitino, 71, says with a laugh, “the more something like an easy commute to work really starts to appeal to you.”
So yes: When Rev. Brian Shanley, St. John’s president, came last spring to pitch Pitino on expanding his commute, going back to the Big East grind, on swapping Iona’s mid-major royalty status for the St. John’s blow-it-up-and-start-from-the-dust rebuild, Joanne had a simple question for Rick.
“Are you nuts?”
All these months later, Joanne is enjoying the ride every bit as much as Rick is, every bit as much as a wholly revitalized St. John’s fan base is. The Johnnies are nearing the end of a weeklong break in the schedule, fresh off a blowout win against Villanova, and on Wednesday they’ll travel to Cincinnati to face Xavier, knowing that top-ranked Connecticut will be waiting for them at the Garden on Saturday.
That promises to be the most anticipated St. John’s game at the Garden in years, precisely the kind of day Shanley had in mind when he poached Pitino away from the Gaels, exactly the kind of moment that coaxed Pitino to quadruple (on good days) his commute.
“We’re still playing catch-up,” Pitino says. “When I took the job I knew there was a lot of work that needed to be done but I didn’t know exactly how deep the rebuild had to be, on the court, off the court, infrastructure. We have a lot to do. But this has been a nice start to the process.”
The Johnnies have already established themselves as a legit NCAA contender, sitting at 13-7 and 5-4 in the league. Their metrics are solid; as of Monday they sat at 35 in the NET (fourth in the Big East) and were 7-6 against Quad 1 and Quad 2 teams. More to the point, they’re playing their best basketball now, save for a hiccup two weeks ago at Seton Hall.
“Our message now, every game, is a simple one,” Pitino says. “Play this game as if you want to go to the NCAA Tournament.”
Pitino, of course, has been there plenty; if he takes the Johnnies, that will be a sixth different school he’s taken, which would move him alone past Lon Kruger and Tubby Smith, the only other ones to do it with five. The bulk of his players, though, are still chasing that elusive goal. Daniss Jenkins and Cruz Davis went with Pitino at Iona. Nahiem Alleyne with with UConn, Zuby Ejiofore at Kansas. That’s it.
That, as much as anything, fuels Pitino right now.
“They’re all hungry to do what they can to leave here a winner,” Pitino says. “They’re hungry to prove it to themselves that they can get to the tournament because most of them know how difficult it is. We’ve seen glimpses where we’ve been a really good road team. And we’re hopeful it will continue.”
There’s this, too: Pitino is one of thousands of kids in and around the city who grew up at a time when St. John’s was the gold standard for them, a time before you could see any college team you wanted on TV. Pitino saw plenty of games at Alumni Hall growing up, idolized Sonny Dove. He never played there, preferring to go away to school.
But he’s there now. Back in the Big East. Back in the city. Preaching the city game.
“There’s so much we need to get done here,” he says. “So far, so good.”
