I gave up on the ghost. The flag has flown. The sword was abandoned. One minute late Sunday afternoon, St. John’s trailed Seton Hall by 19 points at UBS Arena and appeared to have established its first significant position of a season that already had a string of must-win games.
And what felt like 90 seconds later, the Johnnys were all stranded as they got stomped in the second half by the Pirates, lost the game 68-62, and lost any reasonable chance to break the program’s NCAA Tournament drought. He was said to have left the court. Rick Pitino shook hands with Shaheen Holloway. That’s because, like the players, he studied every inch of the last 20 minutes of the game.
All that remains is the fantasy of winning four games in four days at Madison Square Garden next month, a truly stupid one. There will be no picture book sales at Utopia His Parkway this year. The season quickly went from 12 wins and 4 losses to 14 wins and 12 losses. There is no magic pill. There is no magic wand.
“This is the least enjoyable experience of my life,” Pitino said.
Pitino’s entire college coaching career has been a case study in program rehabilitation, but it is on record that he never oversaw a complete bounce back in his first year. Primarily, he took over a program that was moribund or in decline, applied for St. John’s University as the latter, sold the system and promise in his first year, and began to win in earnest in his second year.
At Boston College, he went 17-9, then went 21-9 and won the regular season ECAC-North title. At Providence, he went 17-14, then went 25-9 and cruised to the Final Four. At Kentucky, he went 14-14 in his first year and 22-6 in his second year, winning the SEC title in the regular season. At Louisville, he went 19-13 in his first year, then went 25-7 and was Conference USA Champion in his second year. And Iona went from 12-6 in 2021 (despite winning the MAAC tournament) to 25-8 in 2022.
On the one hand, this is very much a blueprint. The Johnnys will probably still achieve 18 wins. Maybe they’ll sneak into the NIT. And if they stick with 18, the many detractors who make up his vast enemy list will be filled with the gleeful reality that 18 is what Mike Anderson acquired from last year’s team. It will be.
And Pitino deserves at least a few slings and arrows aimed at a team that has gone 2-8 in its last 10 games. Perhaps he played way above his team’s heads in the first 16 games, or miscalculated in many of the program’s stopgap. It regressed to the average value of the last 10 times (or both). That’s his responsibility. Joel Soriano’s mysterious regression last month was at least partially about Pitino. He was responsible for the team’s overall lack of defense in the second half collapse, and after it became clear that this group was unable to play the frenetic, 3-point-happy way he preferred, a system that matched his talent. It’s also his fault that he couldn’t find the pace.
It’s not like he forgot how to coach. However, no matter how good a coach he is, there are tough years. This year has been a tough year. And if we’re going to use Pitino’s past successes as a guide for the future, we should point out, as Pitino himself has pointed out repeatedly this year, that this is a different situation than the one he negotiated at BU or PC. is. In the UK and UL. NIL makes that possible. Transfer Portal makes that possible. UConn’s existence as an annual supernova makes it so.
It’s important to point out that, despite the optimism brought about by Pitino’s hiring, Pitino himself did not guarantee an NCAA bid this year. He asserted that the team will be better in January than it was in November, and even better in March. That first part was correct. The second thing is… well, it doesn’t look good.
St. John’s didn’t hire Pitino to win a championship in 2023-24 either. He was hired to win over the next five years and rebuild and re-establish the infrastructure, interest, excitement and prosperity of the Big East’s sleeping giant. He completed his first three. The last one is the trickiest. But if he can make this program happen there, that will be what he will be remembered for most. It’s still very hard to bet that won’t happen.
It’s equally discouraging to see how a once promising season turned out. Maybe Johnny and the others will spend four magical days in the garden in a few weeks. Most likely he will have a NIT watch party.
