At 73, Rick Pitino is pulling off another masterpiece in a career full of them

By Dana O’Neil, CNN

New York (CNN) — “Dormant.’’

That’s the word Steve Masiello used to describe the St. John’s program he walked into three seasons ago as Rick Pitino’s associate head coach.

He said this while, behind him, the Red Storm players picked their way through the confetti strewn across the Madison Square Garden court, on their way to cut down the nets.

In a league known for its basketball history, no one has done what St. John’s has done. The Johnnies are the first outright back-to-back regular-season champions to also capture consecutive Big East Tournament titles. To put that in context, it is wise to consider the company with which the Johnnies are keeping.

This is the league in which Patrick Ewing spent four years, as did Chris Mullin. This is the league of the Pearl, Walter Berry and the Allens (Ray and Iverson), of Kemba and Brunson, of Big John, Looie, Boeheim and Rollie and Wright

None of them did what St. John’s has done, the Red Storm making history with a turn-the-tables 75-52 poleaxing of a Connecticut team that beat them by 32 two weeks ago. If it didn’t feel quite like a torch passing, it certainly felt like a reckoning.

Goodbye to dormancy. Hello dominance.

The lazy and inaccurate narrative here would be to say that money changes everything. There is no arguing that revenue sharing has not hit the Big East equally. St. John’s is very much among the haves, thanks largely to alum and Vitamin Water founder Mike Repole.

But Repole can only cut the checks; he can’t coach the team. This happened because Rick Pitino is the head coach. That simple. The Johnnies are merely his latest reclamation project in a career’s worth of makeovers.

He exposed the then-new-fangled, and much derided, 3-point line to take lackluster Providence to a Final Four and rebuilt proud Kentucky from the shame of NCAA sanctions to national champion. He arrived at Louisville just as the Cards were starting to slide and enjoyed his first Big East double-double (regular season and tourney title) as well as another title. He even started racking up banners at Iona as he rebuilt his career after leaving Louisville following multiple scandals.

When he went to St. John’s, it suited his M.O. to a tee – proud program, desperate fan base, nowhere to go but up.

Pitino does not win with pixie dust. Quite the opposite, in fact. To play for Pitino is to sign on for exacting misery. At practice, he often wears a wireless mic, the better to make sure everyone hears his withering critiques. He does not suffer laziness or inattention to detail, not from his players nor from his coaches.

Masiello, who was a walk-on for Pitino at Kentucky, has been with Pitino off and on for the better part of a decade; he’s been unofficially fired probably at least once a week in that span.

“I have never seen anyone in my life who has such a relentless desire to push people,’’ his son Richard, the Xavier head coach, told CNN Sports while he watched his father celebrate. “He never stops.’’

“When we recruit players, we don’t promise them that they’ll make it in the NBA,’’ Pitino told CNN Sports as he waited to cut down the nets. “We do promise them that they will get better.’’

These Johnnies were evidence of that.

The team that won this year’s double is barely the same as last year’s. The era of portal movement required an essential rebuild, and St. John’s brought in eight new players for the 2025-26 season. As he went about retooling his team, Pitino’s charge to Masiello was to find players with good character.

Last year’s great run in March memorably deteriorated in the NCAA Tournament, the Red Storm not only bowing out in the second round, but Pitino essentially exiling his star player, R.J. Luis. The Big East Player of the Year exited the game against Arkansas with 4:56 left and never returned.

“We talked to janitors,’’ Masiello told CNN Sports. “I’m not joking. You can’t imagine the research we did.’’

They brought in Dylan Darling from Idaho State, Dillon Mitchell from Cincinnati and Bryce Hopkins from Providence, building a roster essentially around one man.

Zuby Ejiofor is a central casting Pitino project. Barely able to make the court at Kansas, he came to St. John’s in Pitino’s first year. He has gone from 1.2 points per game at KU to 16.3 this season and is the first Big East athlete to win player of the year, defensive player of the year, scholar-athlete of the year and now, tournament MVP.

Harkening back to the league’s glory days, back when the big men battles were so brawling the conference temporarily went to six fouls, Ejiofor scored 18 points, yanked down nine rebounds and swatted six blocks. Upon the occasion of his seventh block, Ejiofor rolled back downcourt giving the crowd a Dikembe Mutumbo-esque finger wag.

By the time the game ended, the trading chants of “let’s go Johnnies” and “let’s go Huskies,’’ had been replaced with deep hoots of “Zoooooooby.”

“One thing a coach always wants is for his team to get better, of course, but for his players to get better,’’ Pitino said. “That’s what makes this so rewarding. These guys have all gotten better.’’

Interestingly so, too, has Pitino.

Forty-one years he arrived in the Big East as a young buck eager to upset the hierarchy. Convinced he couldn’t be a pushover, he instead often fought for the sake of fighting. Believing Rollie Massimino’s plan to divvy up the profits from a league ball deal unfairly favored the old guard, he called the then-Villanova coach out on it during a league meeting. The two nearly came to blows.

During a game against Georgetown, he and John Thompson Jr. started trading barbs to the point that they wound up standing toe-to-toe arguing at midcourt. The much more diminutive Pitino refused to back down, despite the fact that he was essentially yelling into Thompson’s chest.

He has not mellowed. Not by a long shot. With 56 seconds left and Dan Hurley waving the white flag after subbing in a wholesale five-for-five change, Ejiofor missed a block-out and Pitino charged on the floor to point at him.

But there is at least a wistfulness about Pitino that didn’t exist before. He is in less of a hurry for the next thing, and more eager to appreciate what is in front of him. It is, no doubt, a byproduct of age.

At 73, he is now the league’s (much) elder statesman and as he stood on the stage with his players for the trophy presentation, St. John’s mascot, Johnny Thunderbird, held one of the coach’s 16 grandchildren.

“To do this here, in his hometown, I know how special it is to him,’’ his son Richard said. “It is a perfect cap to a career, not that I hope that it’s ending anytime soon. Why should it? I hope he stays forever. There’s no reason to stop. He is the best in college basketball.’’

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.