SAN DIEGO (AP) — When Dylan Darling drove the lane and beat the buzzer with a thrilling layup last Sunday to send St. John's to its first Sweet 16 of the 21st century, Rick Pitino did not celebrate in the moment.
While his players exploded off the bench and tackled Darling in front of the St. John's band at Viejas Arena, an expressionless Pitino touched the lapel of his sharp suit and stoically walked the other way, alongside the crushed Jayhawks,
to shake hands with Bill Self, his fellow Hall of Fame coach.
Pitino's muted response in an impossibly dramatic NCAA Tournament moment went viral. It was a reaction rooted in a half-century of experience in a job where the pain of loss is almost always stronger than the pleasure of victory, and Pitino's empathy for Kansas and Self was praised.
Yet as Pitino will tell anybody who asks, he's still having the time of his life this season with the Red Storm (30-6), who are headed to Washington this week to take on top-seeded Duke in the East Region semifinals.
Pitino celebrated that unforgettable win over Kansas, but he did it minutes later with his players — and he was already looking forward to all the big moments yet to come.
“I’m so jubilant,” Pitino said. “So happy for the fellas. We’ve taken another step now, so it’s just awesome. Proud of our guys. And now it’s just starting. The fun is just starting.”
The 73-year-old Pitino knows he is closer to the end than the start of an epic coaching career, but it's also far from over. And there are still so many horizons ahead.
No coach has ever led four different schools to a Final Four, but St. John's is two victories away — starting Friday against Duke, a No. 1 overall seed that looked slightly shaky last weekend.
Pitino’s non-reaction to Darling’s game-winner was rooted in empathy, but also memory. Pitino was the losing coach when Duke’s Christian Laettner hit his unforgettable jumper to beat Kentucky in the 1992 tournament.
That memory still stings, but Pitino is also looking forward with gratitude and humor.
“I’m hoping we can get Duke at the buzzer next,” he said with a grin. “To make up for that Christian Laettner shot.”
After 915 NCAA victories, two national championships and some truly dismal lows, Pitino is once again firmly atop his profession with another remarkable job at St. John's, a historic basketball school with no recent history of major success. The Johnnies have won 60 games in the past two seasons, a mark only topped in school history by coach Lou Carnesecca, Chris Mullin and Mark Jackson from 1984-86.
Three years after Pitino returned to college basketball's big time, his team has won back-to-back Big East titles — regular-season and tournament both times — and earned the Johnnies' first three NCAA Tournament victories in a quarter-century.
But the milestones seem secondary to the ride for Pitino these days.
“The only thing I’d like to leave the fellow coaches? Just have fun (in) March Madness,” Pitino said last week before the Johnnies routed Northern Iowa in the first round. “I could be out of coaching next year. I really can be. You’re 73. And I want to have the greatest time of my life. I’m going to coach (each) game as if it’s the last game I’ll ever coach. ... If it’s next year, I’m going to coach next year as if it’s the last year I’m going to be on earth. And that’s the way I coach.”
Indeed, Pitino appears to be enjoying every minute of his latest season with a team in the spotlight. He still lights up at the subjects of tactics and teaching, and he still wears suits on the sidelines while most basketball coaches have kept their pandemic quarter-zips.
Pitino’s name and reputation still mean something to the current generation of players, which is a remarkable achievement in itself.
“Even now, seeing him every day, I’m like, ‘I’m really playing for Coach Pitino!’” said forward Dillon Mitchell, who joined St. John’s this season after stops at Texas and Cincinnati. "You hear so much about him, but being with him every day and learning under him, it’s the best experience I’ve ever had.”
This native New Yorker's famed charisma remains vibrant as well.
A week after Pitino celebrated the Johnnies' Big East Tournament title with a beer on the interview podium, he stepped onto the dais in San Diego and deadpanned: “It's very important that I put my beer in a Bodyarmor cup" — teasing the NCAA Tournament organizers' infamously fanatical determination to keep all non-sponsors' beverage brands off their television program.
And when he disagreed with the premise of a media question about St. John’s and star Zuby Ejiofor being disrespected by the tournament committee and All-America voters last week, Pitino feistily delivered a funny, thoughtful dissection of the somebody-didn’t-believe-in-us motivational mentality that permeates every level of sports these days.
“You guys are so off base with that comment of, ‘We’re going to play harder because we were (disrespected),’” Pitino said while wearing a broad smile. “And Zuby, who gets more love than any player I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime, with 10 million people kissing his (butt), how you can say the things that you say? We’re going to play harder because we’re a 5 seed in San Diego? Overlooking the ocean? We’re not going to play any harder than any game this season. So please get off that, because it makes no sense.”
Pitino has seen all of this before, and his decades of experiences exist alongside the present in his mind. When he was asked where the Kansas victory ranks in his long career, his mind flashed to the early 1980s.
“It just makes me go down memory lane,” Pitino said. “I remember being so excited playing in front of 150 people at Boston University and going to the NCAA. The gym was empty, but we were so excited, and they carried me off the court on their shoulders. There was nobody there to cheer but the players. ... This was the final for me, to get St. John’s to the next level. And we’re not done yet.”
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AP March Madness bracket: https://apnews.com/hub/ncaa-mens-bracket and coverage: https://apnews.com/hub/march-madness
