Pitino's past made St. John's revival inevitable

"(Insert name) brings with him an incredible coaching pedigree and is exactly the type of person who will turn this program back into the championship-caliber one we expect here at (insert school)."

Some form of that statement has become the template for any athletic director who has hired a new head coach at the college level in recent years.

St. John's was no different in announcing the hiring of Rick Pitino two years ago to turn around its middling basketball program.

"Coach Pitino is one of the most brilliant minds in the history of the game and has won at the highest levels everywhere he has coached," athletic director Mike Cragg said in a news release. "There is no doubt in my mind he will restore a championship-level program and culture for St. John's basketball."

Rarely do these statements come to fruition, with the coach - and often the athletic director - usually on the firing line within a few years instead. Cragg and the school mutually parted ways last year, but his comments were bang on because Pitino almost instantly restored glory to the Red Storm.

Perhaps the biggest compliment we can pay the 72-year-old is that it's not just unsurprising, it's expected. Forget the fact St. John's hadn't won an outright Big East regular-season title since 1985; Pitino's resume shows this is simply what he does wherever he goes.

With the Red Storm's impending trip to March Madness, Pitino will stand alone as the only man to take six different programs to the NCAA Tournament. Big or small, storied program or not - Pitino wins.

A Boston University program that had never won more than 20 games in a season with Pitino as a first-time full-time head coach? Not a problem. He took the Terriers to two 21-win campaigns and an NCAA Tournament berth in his five years with the school.

How about a Providence team that was 11-20 the season before he took over in 1985? Pitino didn't just reverse the Friars' fortunes, he reeled off a remarkable 25-9 season with a shocking run to the Final Four two years later.

No college basketball fan base is more rabid than Kentucky's, and you can imagine the anger after a 13-19 season in Lexington. Enter Pitino as the savior for Big Blue Nation with an outrageous 219-50 record and a 1996 national title during his tenure.

Let's crank up the pressure now with the head coaching job at in-state rival Louisville. That would be enough of a challenge, but Pitino took over when the Cardinals weren't exactly thriving at the end of Denny Crum's tenure. Louisville won just 12 games the season before Pitino signed on. Two years later, the program posted 25 wins. Two more years and it was 33 and a Final Four appearance. That made Pitino the first coach in history to take three different teams to the Final Four.

Pitino won at least 25 games in 10 seasons, with the 2013 national title the ultimate highlight for the Cardinals - no matter what the NCAA tries to tell you in the history books.

We won't relitigate the ending of Pitino's tenure at Louisville. Despite the fact he was eventually cleared of any recruiting violations, he admitted to ESPN years later that he deserved to be fired because he was the leader of the program.

A three-year exile from the collegiate game ended in 2020 when Iona brought him aboard to take over the MAAC program. Stop me if you've heard this before, but Pitino won instantly. Despite finishing ninth in the conference during the regular season, the Gaels ripped off four consecutive upsets in the conference tournament as Pitino took a fifth different program to the NCAA Tournament.

Three years with Iona led to where we are today: St. John's entering the Big East Tournament as the regular-season champion for the first time in 40 years.

Some past moments have kept the Red Storm relevant - notably Felipe Lopez's Sports Illustrated cover in the mid-1990s and the move to bring back program legend Chris Mullin as bench boss from 2015-19 - but the Red Storm have struggled with consistency since coach Lou Carnesecca left in 1992.

Until now.

There's no secret sauce to Pitino's success. The key ingredients have been the same at every stop in his collegiate journey: intense effort, toughness, and swarming defense.

"I can’t wave my magic wand and suddenly shoot the ball like Steph Curry, so you have to go with what you have," Pitino told Ben Osborne of SLAM in February. "We wear these shirts that say 'PHD,' which stands for Passionate, Hungry, and Driven to succeed. I've coached some great 3-point shooting teams in my time, but if that's not your forte, you go with the areas where you can win."

Pitino's Louisville teams ranked top 10 in defensive efficiency 10 times. Iona was perennially the No. 1 MAAC defense under Pitino. This St. John's roster is third nationally in that statistic and eighth in forcing turnovers at more than 15 per game.

"They're elite. They've got a championship-level defense. They've got a championship-level offensive rebounding," UConn's Dan Hurley told Mike Lopresti of NCAA.com after the two-time defending champs committed 18 turnovers in a loss to the Red Storm this season. "It's disconcerting to start your possession just surviving to get the ball inbounds."

As the game trends more toward 3-point shooting, Pitino's roster moves further in the other direction. The Red Storm rank 345th out of 358 programs in shooting from deep at just 29%. As a result, St John's has the worst offensive rating of the top-40 teams in KenPom's ranking.

However, that won't deter Pitino or the Red Storm in the slightest. The veteran coach took Louisville all the way to the Final Four in 2012 with the nation's 112th-ranked offense.

Five players average at least one steal per game, led by the trio of RJ Luis Jr., Kadary Richmond, and Deivon Smith. Those three also combine for more than 40 points per contest, giving Pitino the type of two-way backcourt performance he saw from Peyton Siva and Russ Smith on Louisville's title-winning team.

St. John's might not have a win in the NCAA Tournament since 2000, but Pitino has built a team that should wreak havoc on whoever it draws come Selection Sunday.

If - and when - that happens, it will simply be the latest item on Pitino's bulletproof resume proving that he's one of the greatest college basketball coaches the sport has ever seen.