On a Tuesday morning in Manhattan, just shy of noon, a crowd cleared the way at Chase Square inside Madison Square Garden. A walker rolled into the lobby towards a seat marked RESERVED in the front row. At 98, Lou Carnesecca cruised into a building he’s always called home, both as a St. John’s and Big East legend. The 5-foot-6 New Yorker was wearing a suit and had his hair slicked back, looking like he hadn’t lost his fastball one bit.
Carnesecca, a defining figure of the Big East glory days, helped make the conference what it was by holding absolutely nothing back, much like John Thompson Jr., Jim Boeheim, Rollie Massimino, P.J. Carlesimo and others did throughout the 1980s. When they spoke, people listened. On Tuesday, Carnesecca had some things to say, and his description of the happenings inside MSG could be applied to the last seven days in the Big East.
“It’s like a home run with the bases loaded!” he said.
What the Hall of Famer was referring to was St. John’s hiring of a fellow inductee, Rick Pitino. The 70-year-old New York native was officially announced as the Red Storm’s new head basketball coach on Monday. It was also an announcement that St. John’s was again serious about winning.
Without an NCAA Tournament berth in the last four seasons and without a win in the big dance since 2000, the St. John’s brass was tired of losing. The leadership was in place with former Providence president Fr. Brian Shanley making the move to bring a former Friars coach to Queens.
One of the most polarizing coaching figures in the history of the sport, Pitino has won everywhere he’s been in college basketball, owning 711 career victories and a combined seven Final Four trips with Providence, Kentucky and Louisville. With his name cleared from past NCAA investigations into accusations that his players received compensation when he was at the helm at Louisville, Pitino has nothing hanging over him. That gave St. John’s the opening to do whatever it took to hire a winner.
Shanley, who engineered the rebuild of Providence’s program, would not miss a chance to boost his legacy by hiring a Hall of Famer to resurrect a second Big East program. Shanley was reportedly relentless in pursuing Pitino after being unable to identify a rising star in the business.
“He’s a superstar,” Pitino said of the university president.
Georgetown makes a huge splash of its own
Roughly 250 miles south of New York on Wednesday…
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