Two days after his press conference drew national headlines for the criticism of his St. John’s players, Rick Pitino took ownership of this declining season.
In a wide-ranging, exclusive interview with The Post — which included his take on the future of the program, what changes he plans to make in formulating next season’s roster and the criticism he has received of late — the Hall of Fame coach accepted responsibility for the direction of the year.
“I think I’m maximizing everything we can possibly maximize, but that hasn’t been enough, so we’re still losing. That’s on me,” Pitino said. “I take losing very personally, I take losing to heart, I take losing to bed. It eats at me.
“I think we all can get better. I can get better. Everything can get better. But there’s no question about it, we could’ve won games that we lost. We’ve been competitive. I don’t give myself high grades at all because we’re losing.”
Nothing has gone right of late for the Johnnies, who have seen their once-promising season fade fast. Once tied atop the Big East at 4-1, their best start in league play since the 2000-01 season, St. John’s has lost eight of the past 10 games to fall out of at-large NCAA Tournament consideration and drop into ninth place in the conference.
It held the lead at halftime in five of those losses and really only had no chance in the final minutes of losses to No. 1 Connecticut and at Seton Hall.
Pitino is planning to change how he treats halftime, in an attempt to shake things up.
“We go in and we’re very analytical. We point out every statistical category, every metric that has gone wrong, gone bad, what we have to do in the second half,” Pitino said. “I think I’m going to get away from that little bit and be a little bit more motivational.”
After Sunday’s loss to Seton Hall, in which the Red Storm (14-12, 6-9) blew a 19-point first-half lead, Pitino said this season was “the most unenjoyable experience of my life.”
He lamented the physical shortcomings of several players and said the season was lost last spring when he and his staff, needing to almost completely turn over the roster after taking over in late March, recruited transfers who didn’t fit his style of play.
He has received an avalanche of criticism in the days since those comments.
“You take the good with the bad. You take the criticism like a man. And certainly you take the accolades humbly, whatever it may be,” he said. “When you lose, you’re going to get criticism, and when something goes wrong you’re going to get criticism. That’s the nature of being a head coach and a leader. You don’t have sour grapes. You take it like a man. All my life I’ve handled adversity. This is no different. This is very, very minuscule compared to what I’ve been through in my life. It’s fine, you’re onto the next game.”
He didn’t walk back those comments Tuesday, saying he wanted his players to read them.
He pushed back on the narrative that he ripped them, instead stating he was “very calm, very collected in my thoughts,” and was merely answering a question about why St. John’s sent Seton Hall to the free-throw line 37 times. Plenty of coaches, he said, have questioned their teams toughness this year.
Pitino insisted he is preparing them for life after college. Several of his seniors will go on to play professionally overseas, and they will face obstacles much tougher than a critical coach.
“I tell them all the time, if you’re in Europe right now and you have two bad games, they will cut you, not pay you, you will take them to FIBA court,” he said. “I want them to understand that this [Name, Image and Likeness] world that they live in is not reality. They’re getting ready to move on, six of them, they all want to play overseas.
“My players get a lot of love, my players get a lot of attention, my players all have great NIL deals. I’m preparing six guys for a very difficult time that lies ahead for them in the basketball world, and I want to prepare them the right way to be mentally and physically tough, to be able to handle any situation.”
Some took Pitino’s comments as a sign he may be having second thoughts about leaving Iona for St. John’s, but he said it at the time and reiterated Tuesday that he has not regretted the decision at all.
Nothing that has happened this year has changed his mind about what can happen at the Queens school or his commitment to turning the program around.
The Johnnies obviously will need to do better in the transfer portal this spring, but they are better positioned to do so and won’t have to rely on the opinions of others, which was the case last offseason with so many spots to fill and not a lot of time.
“It’s 100 percent going to happen. There’s not a doubt in my mind,” Pitino said. “If there was a doubt in my mind, I would turn the job over to someone else and let the job be done. There’s not even a shadow of a doubt in my mind, it’s going to be done.
“I know how to grow a program. We will grow it the right way. It’s not St. John’s. It has nothing to do with St. John’s. St. John’s is every bit as good as Villanova, every bit as good as Providence, every bit as good as Marquette. Now Connecticut is a different breed altogether. They’ve stood the test of time with their greatness. … We [can be] every bit as good as anybody else in this conference.”
