In its deeds and in its words, St. John\u2019s on Saturday pledged its commitment to keeping its basketball program among the elite and Hall of Fame head coach Rick Pitino in place for years to come.<\/p>\n
Just hours before the fifth-ranked Red Storm took the Carnesecca Arena court to face Towson in its first exhibition game, university president Rev. Brian J. Shanley and Pitino highlighted a group for a ceremonial groundbreaking for the school\u2019s new $60 million practice facility for the men\u2019s and women\u2019s basketball program.<\/p>\n
And shortly after that Shanley and athletic director Ed Kull described the school as willing to give the 73-year-old Pitino a raise or extension on his current six-year deal that reportedly pays him $3-3.5 million annually.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we’re a Final Four team or we win the whole thing, there will be many people coming to hire Rick,\u201d Shanley said. \u201cBut I think we have unique things that Rick values: The Garden and being in New York. We will have the best practice facility in the Big East. . . . Unless it\u2019s all about the money \u2014\u00a0and I hope it won\u2019t be \u2014\u00a0we\u2019ll have the package that will keep him here and happy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re going to do everything [and]\u00a0anything it takes to keep Rick Pitino here,\u201d Kull said. \u201cWe are committed to Rick Pitino ending his career here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shanley hired Pitino away from Iona in March of 2023 and he has taken a program that had been on a quarter century slide toward irrelevance back to the national spotlight in two years, winning the Big East, making the NCAA Tournament as a No. 2 seed and regularly selling out the Garden. The anticipation for the coming season is the highest in recent memory after the week began with the Red Storm earning its highest ranking in the AP preseason national rankings.<\/p>\n
Pitino\u2019s annual salary is believed to now rank among the bottom half of the Big East coaches. Shanley acknowledged that he understood that might happen but said the school is willing to keep in step.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time that we hired Rick, I thought we gave him a generous and fair package based on his success,\u201d he said. \u201cI know the price is going to go up and I think we’re going to be able to get the resources to get where we need to go . . . I don’t want to lose Rick because I think he’s the best coach in college basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking to board members and shareholders before the ceremonial groundbreaking, Shanley recalled that Pitino\u00a0didn\u2019t look around the campus when he first interviewed for the job but wanted a full tour of the athletic facilities after he was hired away from Providence.<\/p>\n
\u201cI vividly remember the tour because my heart sank,\u201d he said. \u201cI [was]\u00a0like, \u2018Oh my God, these are the worst facilities in the Big East.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Pitino, too, was highly critical of Carnesecca Arena and the current training facility Taffner Fieldhouse. In the wake of the 2024-25 team\u2019s success, some of it is already being addressed.\u00a0The Storm will play a dozen regular season games at the Garden and just five at Carnesecca Arena this season. The planned fieldhouse would be the other part.<\/p>\n
St. John\u2019s senior vice president Joe Oliva said the actual physical groundbreaking should come in the next two weeks and the goal is that it opens in the spring of 2027. The facility will include multiple practice courts, an extensive strength and conditioning area, video rooms, team lounges and hydro-therapy pools. Taffner will be converted into a recreational space for the rest of the student population.<\/p>\n
Shanley said he felt from the outset a training facility was \u201cneeded\u201d but the path to raise the money for it was unclear. That changed when Pitino took over the Red Storm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe key piece in getting to the point where we are today was re-establishing the basketball program and particularly the men’s basketball program and the key to all this was hiring Rick Pitino,\u201d he said. \u201cI wasn’t going to get investor buy-in to do what we needed to do for both the men’s and women’s programs until we had something that donors and alumni in this city would be proud of. And last year was a magical year,\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n\tRoger 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In its deeds and in its words, St. John\u2019s on Saturday pledged its commitment to keeping its basketball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,1976,4044,398,400,401,99,10151],"class_list":["post-234942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-basketball","tag-basketball","tag-college","tag-college-basketball","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-basketball","tag-ncaabasketball","tag-sports","tag-st-johns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234942","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=234942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}