Ole “Ricky P” is at it again.
Frankly, Rick Pitino can’t stop willing teams to the NCAA tournament. No matter where he is coaching, Pitino led teams are always finding a way to get hot just at the right time in order to sneak into March Madness.
He’s undoubtedly one of the greatest college basketball coaches the sport has ever seen. It’s hard to argue with that when Pitino is about to become the only coach in college basketball history to lead six different teams to the NCAA tournament.
Pitino’s illustrious career (with a couple of scandal bumps along the way) had humble beginnings at Boston University and Providence. Early on in his career, he turned those relatively unknown teams into NCAA tournament Cinderellas.
He then got his first high-level opportunity at the University of Kentucky, where he won a national championship in 1996. Pitino then moved on to coach Kentucky’s rival Louisville (who have been a mess since he left) from 2001 to 2017. He won a title there too, though the NCAA doesn’t recognize it anymore…
Because of all the off-court issues that led to the NCAA vacating Louisville’s championship, Pitino then became somewhat of a journeyman in the coaching world. The longtime college coach went overseas to take over a Greek professional team, and after a couple of years, he returned to America to coach at the small university of Iona (and unsurprisingly made even them tough to beat).
Now, he finds himself at the end of his first season with St. John’s, and a successful season at that. In just one year, he’s turned the Red Storm into somewhat of a powerhouse in the Big East, and has them now in prime position in their conference tournament.
Pitino’s team is set to play the UCONN Huskies, the defending national champions and number one seed in the Big East tournament. Though you can’t ever count out a team in March coached by Rick Pitino, a win for St. John’s over UCONN would be the upset of all upsets.
Even Pitino knows that it will be a tough game. Following the Red Storm’s win in the quarterfinals, the head coach was asked what they needed to have happen in order to take down the Huskies.
Pitino answered with this:
“We gotta have about 6 of their players get COVID.”
SLICK RICK.
What an answer, and what a way to set the expectations low for St. John’s. He’ll without a doubt have his Red Storm fighting in the semifinal game against the Huskies, and that sandbag answer perfectly played up UCONN just so the legendary coach can take them down.
