St. John\u2019s says it is determined to make this Rick Pitino\u2019s last job.\u00a0<\/p>\n
President Fr. Brian Shanley and athletic director Ed Kull both said they anticipate needing to rework the Hall of Fame coach\u2019s contract to ensure that happens.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom my perspective, we\u2019re going to do anything and everything it takes to keep Rick Pitino here,\u201d Kull said after a groundbreaking ceremony for a new $60 million basketball practice facility on Saturday. \u201cWhatever it takes, you have my word, we\u2019re keeping Rick Pitino here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are committed to Rick Pitino ending his career here. At the end of the day, it\u2019s his terms, his timeline, but we are fully committed that this is his last stop.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 73-year-old Pitino has completely flipped the program in two seasons, leading St. John\u2019s to Big East regular season and postseason titles a year ago, along with its first NCAA Tournament victory in 25 years. This week, they were ranked fifth in the Associated Press preseason poll, the school\u2019s highest preseason ranking ever. St. John\u2019s brought in the top-ranked transfer class in the country, according to 247 Sports, and is considered a Final Four contender.\u00a0<\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s Red Storm head coach Rick Pitino talks to the team at practice in Carnesecca Arena on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, in Queens, NY. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key piece in getting to the point where we are today [with the new basketball facility] was reestablishing the basketball program, in particular the men\u2019s basketball program, and the key to all of this was hiring Rick Pitino,\u201d Shanley said during his speech as part of the groundbreaking ceremony. \u201cI wasn\u2019t going to get investor buy-in to do what we needed to do for both the men\u2019s and women\u2019s programs until we had something donors and alumni and this city would be proud of.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pitino is entering his third year of a six-year contract, which is paying him roughly $20 million altogether. At his current salary, he is the sixth-highest paid coach in the Big East. UConn coach Dan Hurley recently signed a six-year deal worth $50 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last offseason, a power-five school pursued Pitino, but he declined to engage. That came following the failure of talks between Pitino and St. John\u2019s to rework his contract.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ed Kull and St. John\u2019s likely have a big Rick Pitino decision to make. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cWe approached them and tried to negotiate what we thought would be a very fair deal and it didn\u2019t go anywhere,\u201d his agent, Evan Daniels, told The Post. \u201cWe believe with what he\u2019s accomplished, he should be paid among the top coaches in the country and certainly among his peers atop the Big East.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll that said, coach isn\u2019t focused on anything negative, only the positive and continuing to build St. John\u2019s.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pitino has frequently said that at the end of each year, he weighs his future, and how much longer he would like to coach. Pitino experienced retirement once, when he was fired by Louisville in October of 2017, and didn\u2019t like it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI missed [coaching] too much,\u201d he said last season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When told that Pitino is sixth in the Big East in salary, Shanley agreed that shouldn\u2019t be the case. The market has clearly changed since he was hired.\u00a0<\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s Red Storm head coach Rick Pitino reacts during a team scrimmage at Madison Square Garden, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2025, in New York, NY. Corey Sipkin for the NY POST<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on his success, I know the price is going to go up, and I think we\u2019re going to be able to get the resources to get to where we need to go,\u201d Shanley said. \u201cI\u2019ll do everything I can to keep Rick happy. I don\u2019t want to lose Rick, because I think he\u2019s the best coach in college basketball.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Shanley later added: \u201cWe\u2019re going to be successful this year, and when this season\u2019s over, we\u2019ll sit down with Rick like we do every year, and we\u2019ll say: Let\u2019s talk about going forward. What is it going to take to keep you happy and keep you here?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. John\u2019s says it is determined to make this Rick Pitino\u2019s last job.\u00a0 President Fr. Brian Shanley and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[7729,3361,9,24,55,54,56,3362,319,3363],"class_list":["post-9004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-big-east","tag-college-basketball","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-ny","tag-rick-pitino","tag-sports","tag-st-johns-red-storm"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9004\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}