NEW YORK – In his first season at St. John\u2019s two years ago, Rick Pitino won 20 games and led the Red Storm to a fifth-place finish in the Big East Conference.<\/p>\n
In his second season a year ago, the Red Storm won 31 games and captured Big East regular-season and tournament titles. Pitino led his sixth different program to the NCAA Tournament and was named Big East Coach of the Year and The Associated Press co-Coach of the year.<\/p>\n
Now heading into Year 3, Pitino, 73, has a team ranked No. 5 in the AP Preseason Poll and with a legitimate chance to contend for the Hall of Famer\u2019s eighth Final Four and third national championship (the Louisville title in 2013 was vacated by the NCAA.)<\/p>\n
\u201cI already think Rick is the greatest of all time to do it at this level, and he\u2019s done it so many different places, and how challenging it is to do it at multiple places,\u201d St. John\u2019s AD Ed Kull told NJ Advance Media Thursday at St. John\u2019s media day. \u201cI think that [another Final Four] would just be icing on the cake in terms of Mount Rushmore and being the greatest of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bill Self of Kansas and Dan Hurley of UConn are the only other active coaches with two NCAA titles. Only a handful of men have three or more, including Roy Williams (UNC) and Jim Calhoun (UConn) with three apiece.<\/p>\n
Depending on what list you consult, Pitino has 885 career wins<\/a>, fifth all-time and first among active coaches, or 761<\/a> (minus the vacated wins associated with some of his scandals), putting him behind Rick Barnes, John Calipari, Self, Kelvin Sampson and Dana Altman among active coaches.<\/p>\n Pitino now has a team challenging for another NCAA title, but told his team it begins on the defensive end.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I told them, it\u2019s the goal of every big time program to be a Final Four contender, and if we\u2019re going to get there, this is what we have to do defensively and offensively,\u201d Pitino said Thursday. \u201cSo I really didn\u2019t talk about us trying to be a Final Four program. These are the things that you have to do to be a Final Four contender.\u201d<\/p>\n The Red Storm are loaded up after securing the No. 1 transfer portal class with additions like Bryce Hopkins (Providence), Ian Jackson (North Carolina), Oziyah Sellers<\/a> (Stanford), Dillon Mitchell (Cincinnati), Joson Sanon (Arizona State) and Dylan Darling (Washington State).<\/p>\n The only question seems to be at point guard, where Pitino is going with Sellers, a converted two guard and deadeye 3-point shooter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe tried about five different guys and then we said…[center] Zuby [Ejiofor] is handling the ball more than the point guard…so that\u2019s when we said it\u2019s a positionless offense,\u201d Pitino said. \u201cSo Oziyah is going to defend the point guard, he\u2019s going to bring it up more than the other players in the back court. But once you get to the front court, it\u2019s positionless basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n As for the Final Four and NCAA championship expectations, the players are embracing it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have all the pieces,\u201d Hopkins said. \u201cWe have the depth to do it. Josiah is great. We have shooting ability. Ian Jackson…Josiah, Dillon Mitchell, Zuby, we have all the pieces you need to do something special. It\u2019s a matter of us coming together, building chemistry and playing together.\u201d<\/p>\n Ejiofor, who could be the Big East Preseason Player of the Year, is also buying into the expectations.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, it being our last year, it\u2019s Final Four, it\u2019s national championship or bust,\u201d Ejifor said.<\/p>\n And if that happens, it will be hard to argue that Pitino isn\u2019t the greatest active college basketball coach.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK – In his first season at St. John\u2019s two years ago, Rick Pitino won 20 games…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":229833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":["post-229832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=229832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/229832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=229832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=229832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=229832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}