![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2218683429-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRick Pitino sure has the life. He is still winning big 13 years after his induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and, better yet, he is still living beside the third green at Winged Foot Golf Club.<\/p>\n
He called his backyard view of the iconic course a suburban New York treasure. \u201cI never want to give that up,\u201d Pitino said.<\/p>\n
Another thing he never wants to part with: his job. At 73 years old and a grandfather to 16, Pitino is not running away from the NIL, play-for-pay realities of college basketball. He dearly loves the game (\u201cI eat, sleep, and drink it.\u201d) and wants to keep going and going, maybe until his 80th birthday, God willing, of course.<\/p>\n
Three years into a six-year contract, St. John\u2019s wants Pitino to accept a lucrative new deal to keep him next door to Winged Foot. \u201cThey have offered me one, but I haven\u2019t signed it yet,\u201d Pitino said. \u201cI think it\u2019s on the table right now and in the works but \u2026 I\u2019m just focused on winning this tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Big East Tournament. St. John\u2019s won it last year, Pitino\u2019s second season at the school, for the first time in a quarter century. The Red Storm finished 2025 ranked fifth in the nation \u2014 before falling to Arkansas in their second NCAA Tournament game \u2014 and started this season at No. 5 again, the best preseason ranking in program history.<\/p>\n
Early struggles tempered expectations before St. John\u2019s won 16 of its final 17 games and repeated as regular-season champs for the first time in four decades. Everything revolves around big man Zuby Ejiofor, the school\u2019s first star to win the conference\u2019s Player of the Year and Defensive Player of the Year in the same season. The Red Storm start the Big East Tournament on Thursday against Providence. It\u2019s a team with a legitimate chance to reach the Final Four for the first time since Lou Carnesecca and Chris Mullin got there in 1985.<\/p>\n
If St. John\u2019s does advance to Indianapolis in April, Pitino would be leading his fourth school to a Final Four (Providence, Kentucky and Louisville) and coaching in the national semis in a fifth different decade (starting with Providence in 1987). He doesn\u2019t think this 2026 team is as talented as the 2025 team that was upset in the tournament, but then again, these Red Storm are not lacking in poise and heart.<\/p>\n
\u201cCan we win the national championship?\u201d Pitino said. \u201cI\u2019m not sure our backcourt is strong enough for that. But the way (point guard) Dylan Darling is playing, everything is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
It would be a hell of a thing if the basketball lifer who grew up in Manhattan, Queens, and Long Island, who signed his UMass scholarship papers on the floor of Madison Square Garden, and who once coached the New York Knicks into the playoffs finished his career by winning St. John\u2019s\u2019 first NCAA title. In a city of championship droughts \u2014 the Jets haven\u2019t won since the 1968 season, the Knicks since 1973, the Mets since 1986, etc. \u2014 St. John\u2019s last reached an NCAA final in 1952, six months before Pitino was born.<\/p>\n
A ticker-tape parade in his hometown at some point before he finally retires? Pitino said that he hasn\u2019t given it much thought, that his philosophy on basketball as he\u2019s gotten older aligns with the late Jim Valvano\u2019s approach to March.<\/p>\n
Survive and advance \u2026 from one day to the next.<\/p>\n
But if the only coach to win national titles at multiple schools were to win The Big One at a third in St. John\u2019s?<\/p>\n
\u201cI really don\u2019t think in terms of winning a national championship,\u201d Pitino said. \u201cI think in terms of building up a team to have a shot to win the national championship.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it\u2019s the place I grew up in, the place I love, so it would mean everything as a New Yorker. It would be one of the great endings for any person, never mind me. \u2026 It would be an amazing feat.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Yankees manager Aaron Boone, left, and Rick Pitino swap jerseys during the Yankees\u2019 playoff run. (Jim McIsaac \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n
So would 1,000 career Division I victories, depending on how you keep score. Pitino owns 910 on-court victories, even though the NCAA puts his official total at 787. Infractions committed on his watch at Louisville compelled the NCAA to vacate his 2013 national crown and, ultimately, cost Pitino his job. Those unforced errors are there for people to judge how they see fit.<\/p>\n
Pitino said the different mistakes made with Louisville, and years earlier with the Boston Celtics, changed him over the long term. \u201cI\u2019m a much better coach and person because of failure,\u201d he said. After Louisville, he found a sanctuary with the Panathinaikos club in Greece, where, Pitino said, \u201cI didn\u2019t know one person and I was coaching in countries I\u2019d never seen before. That made me stronger and better, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
He landed back in the States at mid-major Iona and then at St. John\u2019s, a barely-relevant program that Pitino described as \u201ca mess\u201d upon his arrival. Nobody who has watched Pitino coach is surprised that three years later, St. John\u2019s is the opposite of that.<\/p>\n
Pitino can\u2019t see himself coaching at yet another school, though he said his time in Greece and the EuroLeague was so special that a return there \u201cwould be a possibility if I\u2019m being totally honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
And as soon as he said those words, Pitino stopped himself cold and pondered those Winged Foot views. \u201cI don\u2019t feel like moving again,\u201d he said through a laugh.<\/p>\n
At St. John\u2019s, he gets to challenge himself in different ways by competing against his son Richard at Xavier and against Dan Hurley at UConn, winner of two of the last three national titles. Nothing is easy in college basketball at a time when Pitino believes the sport is as competitive on the floor as he\u2019s ever seen it.<\/p>\n
Now comes the hard part, inside March Madness, a place where you need guards to make plays and everyone to make foul shots to have a shot at the ring.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt can definitely be done at St. John\u2019s,\u201d Pitino said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou just have to be a little lucky along the way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rick Pitino sure has the life. He is still winning big 13 years after his induction into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":808082,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,5480,49,48,320,33964],"class_list":{"0":"post-808081","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-mens-college-basketball","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-opinion","13":"tag-st-johns-red-storm"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116216012049970681","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808081","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808081"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808081\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/808082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}