As he sat through his players’ tears and talked through his own disappointment, St. John’s men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino hadn’t quite let go of the dream. The sting of a down-to-the-wire loss to Duke in Friday night’s Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament would eventually settle in as reality, but here, in this moment, Pitino was still in the land of what could have been.
“We’re all very disappointed we didn’t have a chance to win a national championship,” he said from his postgame microphone in Washington, reiterating later, “We believed we were going to win this game. We’re all very disappointed.”
Of course Pitino believed his team belonged. Across five decades in the game, he has always believed his teams belonged, all the way back to the first one he called his own, the Boston University Terriers.
Take it back to 1978, when Terriers athletic director John Simpson handed a young assistant coach from Jim Boeheim’s Syracuse staff the keys to a middling men’s program. Simpson upped the program’s scholarship budget, upped Pitino’s salary, and on April 1, inside the Case Center, introduced the world to the 25-year-old wunderkind.
Two comments from that Pitino press conference stood out. One, “I hope we can rival the hockey program here,” spoke to Pitino’s understanding of the fight to gain on-campus support. The second, “We intend to build the program to a point where we can play BC, Holy Cross and Providence,” spoke to his understanding of the fight to beat the best competition in the area.
Pitino did his job on Commonwealth Ave., riding a slogan “the hardest working coach, for the hardest working team in the country,” to an NCAA Tournament appearance in 1983, BU’s first in 24 years. From there it was off to the NBA as a Knicks assistant, and then to Providence and a miracle Final Four appearance.
Hindsight shows the Friars’ fun as one of the many coaching stops that would ultimately define Pitino’s coaching life, including the subsequent moves back to the Knicks as head coach for two seasons and then Kentucky (where he would end up on the wrong side of the most famous court-length pass in college basketball history but later win the first of two national championships, the second coming at Louisville) and then his ill-fated return to Boston as Celtics coach.
No recounting of Pitino’s quotable history is complete without his epic Celtics’ admission, “Larry Bird is not walking through that door, fans. Kevin McHale is not walking through that door, and Robert Parish is not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through the door, they’re gonna be gray and old.”
Pitino never did own up to his own role in those awful Celtics years — a 102-146 record across three and a half seasons before he resigned in January 2001 — when his personnel decisions proved quite the mismatch for the NBA game. Instead, he found himself back in college (Louisville) and continued to march through many stops, more than a few scandals (most of his own making), a rebuilding effort through Greece and a smaller Division 1 program at Iona, and finally, to St. John’s, where he has managed to drag the storied Big East program into the modern-day game.
At 73, the oldest among Sweet 16 coaches, he’s proven an ability to grow and change with the landscape behind him, expanding his recruiting base around the world, establishing the necessary ties to fund NIL money, and recognizing the shift toward a more transactional relationship with players. From Boston disappointment to college basketball’s favorite uncle, he still belongs.
“I’ve loved every place I’ve lived,” he said in the lead-up to Friday, when his unique resume was compared to that of the man who would ultimately lose the night’s other Sweet 16 game.
Tom Izzo, 71, couldn’t get Michigan State past Dan Hurley’s UConn team. The loss wrapped up his 31st season in East Lansing.
“I’m a different guy,” Pitino said. “I’m not a nester. Everybody is different. I don’t want to live in the same place my whole life. I enjoyed Greece probably more than any place I’ve ever lived for those two years. Not knowing one person, just exploring all the islands.
“For me it was great. For Tom it’s great, being in East Lansing, he loves it there. Everybody is different. I’ve enjoyed every stop along the way. Great people I’ve met. Great friends. Lifetime friends.”
Pitino didn’t add one more lifetime memory with this year’s St. John’s team, but that doesn’t mean he won’t remember it fondly.
“These were just the greatest kids in the world,” he said. “They wanted to win so badly. They were willing to do anything to try and win. I’ll never have a team like this again with that type of attitude. I may have some good teams, but never, ever again with this type of attitude and just incredible people. My heart breaks for them right now.”
Amid an ever-changing landscape, he continues to secure his place as one of the best ever to do it.
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her @Globe_Tara.