NEW YORK — Even the man who hired Rick Pitino to turn St. John’s around didn’t expect it to happen so quickly.
When Pitino famously guaranteed at his introductory press conference in March of 2023 that St. John’s was “going to be back,” the program had not won an outright Big East championship since 1985 or even a share of the conference title since 1992.
It had been more than five years, meanwhile, since Pitino was fired from Louisville amid a federal probe into fraud and corruption in college basketball. Pitino had gone on to coach in Greece for more than a year and at Iona for three.
“This is a redemption story,” St. John’s president Rev. Brian J. Shanley said this month after the Red Storm won their first outright Big East crown in four decades. “Where else could Rick Pitino do what he’s doing except here at [Madison Square] Garden with St. John’s?”
That redemption story received another chapter Wednesday when Pitino was named Big East Coach of the Year for 2025.
Now in his second season at St. John’s, Pitino led the sixth-ranked Red Storm to a 27-4 regular-season record, including 18-2 in conference play, and to the top seed in this week’s Big East Tournament.
That’s after St. John’s went 20-13 in its first season under Pitino but was left out of the Big Dance.
“This is an answer to a prayer,” Shanley said. “This is what I hoped when we hired Rick, that we would get back to where we are right now, contending for a national championship. This is just the beginning.”
St. John’s leads the Big East in points (78.6) and rebounds (40.8) per game while limiting opponents to a conference-best 66.3 points per game.
Pitino did it with a roster that lost six of its top seven scorers from last season.
He dominated the transfer portal by bringing in the likes of do-it-all guard Kadary Richmond and the speedy Deivon Smith, who proved to be perfect complements to returnees RJ Luis Jr. and Zuby Ejiofor in their breakout seasons.
And now St. John’s is set to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2019. The only question is how highly it will be seeded.
