Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino accepts job at St. John’s

NEW YORK (AP) — Rick Pitino is back in the BigEast Conference.

St. John’s hired the Hall of Fame coach Monday to boost astoried program that’s been mired in mediocrity for much of thiscentury.

The school announced the move on Twitter, and Pitino is expectedto be formally introduced during a news conference Tuesday atMadison Square Garden.

Following a successful run at nearby mid-major Iona, the70-year-old Pitino was plucked away to replace Mike Anderson, firedMarch 10 after four seasons in charge of the Red Storm withoutmaking the NCAA Tournament.

Reports quickly surfaced that indicated St. John’s planned totarget Pitino, who grew up on Long Island not far from the school’sQueens campus in New York City.

Pitino has been to seven Final Fours and won a pair of NCAAchampionships, one each at Kentucky (1996) and Louisville(2013).

He was dismissed at Louisville in 2017 after an FBIinvestigation into college basketball corruption led to allegationsof NCAA violations. It was the third scandal, professional andpersonal, in an eight-year period with the Cardinals — but Pitinowas eventually exonerated in the FBI-related case.

Pitino has been coaching college basketball so long that he wason the opposing bench with Big East rival Providence when St.John’s was a national power in the mid-1980s under LouCarnesecca.

Now, he’s tasked with invigorating a Red Storm squad that hasn’twon an NCAA Tournament game — or even reached the Big Eastsemifinals — since 2000. The school has made only three NCAAappearances over the past two decades, the most recent coming in2019 under Chris Mullin.

During that time, through several conference reconfigurations,St. John’s has fallen behind Big East foes with similar profilessuch as Villanova, Providence and Seton Hall.

The Red Storm went 18-15 during a turbulent 2022-23 season,including 7-13 in Big East play to finish eighth in the conferencestandings. They blew a 14-point lead against sixth-ranked andtop-seeded Marquette in the Big East Tournament quarterfinals,ending the season with a 72-70 loss in overtime that left Andersonwith a 68-56 record at St. John’s.

Pitino has a .740 winning percentage in 34 full seasons as acollege basketball coach. He has guided five schools to the NCAATournament, including Boston University (1983) and Iona (2021,2023).

He took a surprising Providence team on a memorable run to the1987 Final Four, but the 2013 national title Pitino won atLouisville (then in the Big East) was later vacated by the NCAAafter an investigation found that an assistant coach paid escortsand exotic dancers to entertain players and recruits in campusdorms.

After two years coaching in Greece, he got the job at Iona — asmall, private Catholic school located in New Rochelle, just northof New York City.

Pitino went 64-22 in three years with the Gaels, guiding them totwo regular-season titles in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conferenceand a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances. Seeded 13th this year,they led No. 4 seed UConn at halftime before getting knocked out inthe first round with an 87-63 loss that snapped a 14-game winningstreak.

Pitino posted tweets thanking Iona administrators and “all thosepeople who touched our lives.”

“To my players, the last three years. All I can say is you knowhow much I love you,” he tweeted. “Follow up, I’m not sad it ended.I’m so grateful it happened.”

Leading up to Iona’s NCAA Tournament game, Pitino said he hopedhe can coach for 12 more years.

“But I’ll take six or seven,” he said.

He said it would take “a special place” for him to considerleaving Iona, but he also spoke about how much he admired St.John’s president, the Rev. Brian Shanley, who previously worked atProvidence.

Pitino had two stints in the NBA, one with the New York Knicksthat featured a division title and a failed stretch with the BostonCeltics that didn’t produce a playoff appearance.

But in college, he endured only one losing season (13-14 at BUin 1980-81).

And now, at a time when Hall of Fame coaching contemporarieslike Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Boeheim have reached the end of theirroad, Pitino is going strong and getting new jobs.

St. John’s has the ninth-most wins among Division I teams, with90 winning seasons in its 116-year basketball history.

The school has reached two Final Fours (1952, 1985) and won theNIT a record six times — including back-to-back crowns in the 1940swhen that event was still often considered the country’s premierpostseason tournament.

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AP College Sports Writer Ralph D. Russo contributed to thisreport.