LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- This is not the place to come for some kind of high-handed view of Rick Pitino’s return to college basketball.
There will be plenty of that. No, the NCAA has not passed a final judgment on Pitino for the pay-for-play mess at Louisville. No, he hasn’t even served the five-game suspension the NCAA gave him for the Katina Powell mess at Louisville, for which it could never find any evidence that he knew about or even indirectly condoned.
Pitino is back in the college game, having been announced as the next head coach at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York.
His return is a shot in the arm for college basketball.
At a time when the NCAA Tournament has been canceled and there’s little to look forward to, what if Pitino decided to bring his Iona Gaels to Freedom Hall to play first-year NCAA Division I program Bellarmine? Would that be something you’d circle on the calendar? That’s just me speculating. But after watching Luke Hancock’s Most Outstanding Player banner hung this past season and the 2005 Final Four team being honored without him here, I have to believe the city would turn out.
Over the past three years, the Hall of Fame coach has been made the face of a college basketball scandal that was far bigger than him. Whatever he knew or didn’t know about it, no wiretap or FBI investigation could uncover any proof that he directed it or knew of it. A U.S. District Court judge even acknowledged that he had no knowledge, while at the same time slamming him when he wasn’t even on trial, saying that those who conspired to pay players were “covering their tracks” to protect Pitino. It was a public conviction without a trial.
Pitino now will coach basketball in that court’s jurisdiction. And coach it well.
Kansas coach Bill Self was friends with ex-adidas consultant T.J. Gasnola, texted with him about players and would have had the No. 1 overall seed in this year’s NCAA Tournament had it been played. At LSU, coach Will Wade is alleged to have been on an FBI wiretap talking about a “strong ass” offer to a recruit and remains in his position. A Pitino assistant alleged to have been directly involved with paying a player at Louisville, Kenny Johnson, still works as an assistant.
If all those are going to continue in the game this many years after the fact, Pitino might as well be back on the sidelines.
The long road back for Pitino has included an exile in Greece (we should all be so lucky) and walking away from a lawsuit against Louisville, choosing to heal rather than continue the fight. He said at the time that getting his life back as a college basketball coach was more important than the money, and now he has.
“My passion in basketball started in New York and will end there at Iona College,” Pitino said in a statement released by the school. “Tim Cluess (who resigned as coach after last season for undisclosed health reasons but who remains at the school in another capacity) has done a spectacular job creating success and a winning spirit ... At Iona, I will work with the same passion, hunger and drive that I’ve had for over forty years. There is a real professionalism in how things are run here and this is a very tight, strong community."
For Iona, it’s instant exposure. Pitino is the only story in sports right now, and would’ve been a big story whenever this happened. That he becomes coach at a time when the sports world is standing still makes it all the more dramatic.
One of the happiest people in Louisville to hear the news was Bellarmine coach Scott Davenport. His team was supposed to be playing in its final NCAA Division II Tournament on Saturday night. Instead, Davenport ran more than 8 miles this morning (a habit Pitino got him into) and had cause to smile when he saw Pitino had been hired. He had been texting congratulations to his old friend and boss when I reached him.
“What I will say will be from me – that I’m happy for him,” Davenport said. “The person and the coach. The father, the mentor, the teacher. I’m happy for him. And the reason that it’s a great day for college basketball in my opinion is his ability to teach the game on and off the court. And I say that from the experience of every, single minute that I was able to teach the game with him – and I did not say for him. And I just have to think, in my heart, I’m one of many who would not be where they are without him, and would not be the coach I am without him.”
Davenport is working furiously to get games with Division I opponents for next season. Pitino can certainly expect to be on the other end of a Bellarmine full-court press to play.
When the school announced its move to Division I on June 17 of last year, Davenport had already heard from Pitino. He called the day before and the men spoke for 45 minutes.
“It was one of the greatest phone calls I’ve ever had, but at the same time, it was very confusing," Davenport said. “He was elated for me and proud of me for what Bellarmine was getting ready to do. He was more elated and proud than anybody I talked to. But at the same time, in a blink, you could hear his frustration and confusion.”
Davenport wasn’t the only one who expressed satisfaction at Pitino’s return to the college game Saturday. Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim was another.
“He's an unbelievable coach, and I'm glad he got a second chance,” Boeheim told Forbes writer Adam Zagoria. “He’s the only coach that got fired in that whole thing, and they probably did less than anybody else ... He’s a great coach. He’s won everywhere he’s been.”
It’ll take a while for Pitino to hold an introductory news conference. The campus of Iona is in the middle of a coronavirus lockdown. There are bigger things going on right now.
None of us knows how long it will take to get back to normal. I do know this: College basketball is more interesting with Pitino in it. And when it fires back up, there will be no coach more fired up than the one in New Rochelle.
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