ALBANY, N.Y. — After the final game of his third season at Iona, Rick Pitino said he didn’t know whether he’d be back for a fourth — or if he’d be coaching somewhere else.
Will he stay at Iona, or will he go?
“I really don’t have an answer to it, to be honest with you,” Pitino said. “I have no idea if it is or isn’t because I’ve focused everything on this game.”
The 70-year-old Pitino, who reached the NCAA tournament with Iona for the second time after a long, storied Hall of Fame career at Boston University, Providence, Kentucky, Louisville and the NBA, remains St. John’s No. 1 target, sources told ESPN’s Jeff Borzello on Friday.
The two sides have had discussions, but no deal has been finalized at this point, sources said, but the search has remained focused on Pitino and no other serious candidates have emerged.
On the court, Pitino’s 13th-seeded Gaels hung tough with No. 4 UConn on Friday before falling 87-63.
For a half, it looked like Pitino might have gotten his first win as a double-digit seed as a head coach. Iona led UConn 39-37 at halftime, following what he called the best half his team has played all season.
But that would not last. Connecticut more than doubled up Iona in the second half, coasting to the win to send Pitino into the coaching questions he fielded as often the day before the Gaels’ first-round NCAA game as he did afterward.
Before he arrived at the podium for his postgame news conference here, Pitino walked through the hallways of MVP Arena. He wished luck to a Drake basketball player — Drake and Miami were playing the following game — and then stopped to talk for a brief moment with P.J. Carlesimo, the former Seton Hall head coach and current ESPN radio analyst. Flanked by an armed police officer, Pitino walked by the Iona band before he ran into Connecticut coach Dan Hurley.
He and Hurley embraced, and he told Hurley, “Win it all. Win it all. You’ve got the team to do it.”
It’s something he’d repeat moments later on the dais, saying he believed the Huskies had the attributes in place to potentially win a national championship.
Pitino said he wasn’t becoming emotional on the podium when he was asked about his future. He later talked about being exonerated in the Louisville basketball scandal and how it took years away from his career. He said he has cherished his past — both the successes and the mistakes he made — and where he is now. On Thursday, Pitino said he would consider coaching for another…
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