Roger Rubin: When should St. John's get Rick Pitino to sign? Yesterday!
St. John's head coach Rick Pitino gestures during the first half against Duke in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA college basketball tournament on Friday in Washington. Credit: AP/Abbie Parr
WASHINGTON — Let us not use terms like “top priority” in this moment.
Getting Rick Pitino’s signature on the contract the St. John's administration has renegotiated with him is the only priority in this moment.
A fog of heartbreak has set in after many weeks of joy surrounding the program. The Red Storm’s deepest NCAA Tournament run in 27 years ended with an 80-75 East Regional semifinal loss to overall No. 1 seed Duke at Capital One Arena on Friday night. A thrilling 30-win season is over. It was the final game for Zuby Ejiofor, who stands as one of the program’s all-time greats. St. John’s Nation’s adopted sons Bryce Hopkins, Dillon Mitchell and Oziyah Sellers also are departing.
The terms of a restructured contract for Pitino that would make him the second-highest-paid coach in the Big East were offered, as first reported in Newsday, and have been negotiated. The final hurdle — increasing the pool of dollars for Pitino’s staff — was cleared last week.
Now St. John’s needs to get a pen in Pitino’s hand and then get that pen to paper.
With the finish line in sight, it is important to say here that St. John’s and its president, Rev. Brian J. Shanley, hit it out of the park — a tape-measure job — by hiring Pitino from Iona. With consecutive years of 30-win seasons and a pair of Big East regular-season and tournament titles, he has made good on his promise to return the Red Storm to college basketball’s top tier, and it took him only three seasons.
Getting this one right is a nice change for the school when it comes to basketball coaches. Since Lou Carnesecca retired from the gig, there had been an awful lot of missteps.
Some incredibly brief thumbnail sketches on the school’s history with the position:
Top Carnesecca assistant Brian Mahoney, who replaced Carnesecca in April 1992, took the first post-Looie team to the NCAA Tournament and won a game there before three straight seasons of finishing .500 or worse. Some thought it stemmed from over-reliance on a single AAU program, others on the coaching and still others on the product being a harder sell without the St. John’s icon.
Fran Fraschilla actually was a very good hire. The New Yorker could bring in top city players and had the Red Storm back in the NCAA Tournament in his second — and last — season. St. John’s had an inflated sense of self-importance, and when Fraschilla wanted to listen to an offer from Arizona State, the school ended the relationship. The thinking: Coaching the Red Storm should not be treated as a stepping-stone job.
Mike Jarvis got the Red Storm to the 1999 Elite Eight and won the 2000 Big East Tournament with big contributions from Fraschilla’s players. The rest of his term proved messy. He fractured the program’s relationship with area talent by saying he was done recruiting spoiled high school players, he had 35 victories vacated for a player getting cash under the table and he got fired before Christmas in 2003.
The remainder of the 2003-04 season, with assistant Kevin Clark in charge, included a sex scandal resulting from an incident involving several players in Pittsburgh.
St. John’s wanted to lure Long Islander Paul Hewitt from Georgia Tech next. When he turned it down, he suggested Kansas assistant Norm Roberts, a New Yorker who was recruiting well for the Jayhawks, and the administration went with it.
Roberts was a high-character guy but struggled in his first head-coaching gig. Twice in his six seasons, the Red Storm finished a game over .500.
Hiring Steve Lavin before the 2010-11 season was a huge score. He landed coveted recruits, won recruiting battles with blue-blood programs and got the Red Storm to a pair of NCAA Tournaments in his five seasons.
Yes, the upper administration may not have liked his strategy of recruiting players by showing them around Manhattan instead of campus, but the fact that he was offered the job before he ever got to see the campus indicates there was some self-awareness there.
Lavin was let go when St. John’s icon Chris Mullin wanted the gig. New president Bobby Gempesaw had a chance to make a huge splash with the hire. Dan Hurley probably could have been coaxed from URI in that moment, but that’s not the route St. John’s took. And besides, how would the university community have liked it if the favorite son wanted the gig and the new president took a pass?
Mullin rekindled some interest from the local community. Getting Shamorie Ponds from Brooklyn was a nice move. But Mullin’s teams finished under .500 the first three years and got the last spot in the NCAA Tournament field in his fourth before losing a First Four game. The divorce between the school and its former star that followed was not pleasant.
Mike Anderson was the best resume in the pile by the time St. John’s was filling the position, but though he never had a losing season in his four, he never made it to an NCAA Tournament. St. John’s decision to fire him “for cause” two years into a six-year contract extension with guarantees proved costly.
But it all led to the hiring of Pitino, and three years later, the program is soaring again.
Now the administration has the chance to lift St. John’s Nation’s fog of heartbreak with the stroke of a pen. Time to get it done.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
