The ghost has been given up. The flag has been furled. The sword has been surrendered. One minute late Sunday afternoon, St. John’s was trucking Seton Hall at UBS Arena, up by 19, seemingly making its first essential stand of a season that had already been reduced to a series of must-win games.
When it was over, Rick Pitino shook Shaheen Holloway’s hand after Holloway’s Seton Hall Pirates had trucked and trampled Pitino’s St. John’s Red Storm, 68-62.
The Pirates had taken the Johnnies to the woodshed across the game’s final 20 minutes, and Holloway had all but thrown Pitino’s first St. John’s team into a wood chipper.
All that remains is a fantasy — a folly, really — of winning four games in four days at Madison Square Garden next month. There will be no storybooks sold on Utopia Parkway, not this year. The season has gone from 12-4 to 14-12 in an eyeblink. No magic potions. No magic wands.
“This,” Pitino said, “is the most unenjoyable experience of my lifetime.”
It’s a matter of record that, while Pitino’s entire college-coaching career has been a case study in program rehabilitation, he has never overseen a complete first-year turnaround. Mostly, he has taken over programs that were dying or decaying — file St. John’s under the latter — sold a system and a promise in Year 1 and then started to do serious winning in Year 2.
At Boston U., it was 17-9 followed by 21-9 and a regular-season ECAC-North title. At Providence, it was 17-14 followed by 25-9 and a rollicking ride to the Final Four. At Kentucky, it was 14-14 in Year 1, 22-6 and a regular-season SEC title in Year 2. At Louisville, it was 19-13 his first year followed by 25-7 and a Conference USA championship his second. And Iona went from 12-6 (though they did win the MAAC Tournament) in 2021 to 25-8 in ’22.
On one hand, this is exactly the blueprint. The Johnnies are still probably going to hit 18 wins. Maybe they’ll sneak into the NIT. And if they do stick at 18, it will fill many detractors who comprise his vast enemies list with the gleeful reality that 18 was what Mike Anderson got out of last year’s team.
And Pitino deserves at least a couple of the slings and arrows now pointed at his team after going 2-8 in its last 10. He probably miscalculated on a lot of the temporary program stopgaps that either played way over their heads the first 16 games or have regressed to the mean the last 10 (or both). That’s on him. Joel Soriano’s puzzling regression the last month, at least in part, is on Pitino. The team-wide inability to guard against second-half collapses, that’s on him, along with his failure to find a system to match his talent after it became obvious this group couldn’t play at his preferred, frenetic, 3-point-happy pace.
It doesn’t mean he’s forgotten how to coach. But even the best coaches have tough years. This has been a tough year. And if you’re going to use Pitino’s past successes as a guide going forward, it should be pointed out — as Pitino himself has repeatedly pointed out this year — that this is a different landscape than the ones he negotiated at BU, at PC, at UK and at UL. NIL makes it so. The transfer portal makes it so. The presence of UConn as an annual supernova makes it so.
It should be pointed out: For all the optimism Pitino’s hiring engendered, Pitino himself never guaranteed an NCAA bid this year. He did make assurances that the team would be better in January than it was in November, and better still in March. The first part of that was correct; the second … well, it doesn’t look good.
St. John’s also didn’t hire Pitino to win in 2023-24; he was hired to win across the next five years, to rebuild and reestablish infrastructure, interest, excitement and prosperity in the Big East’s dormant sleeping giant. He has done the first three. The last is the trickiest. But that will be what’s best remembered, if he’s able to get this program there. It is still awfully hard to bet against that happening.
It’s just equally discouraging to see what’s become of a once-promising season. Maybe the Johnnies have four magical days at the Garden in them in a few weeks. More likely is an NIT watch party.
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