Iona coach Rick Pitino has agreed on a six-year contract to become the next coach at St. John’s, returning to the Big East Conference with lofty expectations of restoring the Red Storm to national prominence, sources told ESPN on Monday.
Pitino is informing his Gaels team in a meeting Monday afternoon that he is leaving the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference program that he led to two NCAA tournament appearances in his three seasons on the job, sources said.
St. John’s courted Pitino, 70, passionately since firing coach Mike Anderson recently, and landed him with what is being described as a lucrative financial package.
Pitino is the only coach to lead three programs to the Final Four (Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville), and won national titles with Kentucky and Louisville in 1996 and 2013 respectively.
In a meeting with the St. John’s brass on Sunday, Pitino mapped out his long-term vision for the program, a source told ESPN. Pitino engaged with St. John’s officials about the school’s commitment, as sources said he would be taking the job with the intention to compete for Big East championships and the national title. That will require significant support both for the program itself and in the name, image, and likeness space. The two sides discussed about what is needed for the program going forward.
Pitino will be St. John’s most decorated coach since Lou Carnesecca stepped down in 1992. Pitino is a Hall of Fame coach who has been to seven Final Fours.
St. John’s has been to two Final Fours in its history and reached just three NCAA tournaments since 2002. Pitino has won two national titles and coached in 23 NCAA tournaments.
Over that span since 2002, St. John’s has gone through Mike Jarvis, Norm Roberts, Steve Lavin, Chris Mullin, and Anderson as head coaches.
Pitino is from New York, and he coached with the Knicks as an assistant under Hall of Famer Hubie Brown and as the franchise’s head coach from 1987 to 1989. His return to the city will immediately kick-start the school’s relevance in the local sports scene, which has diminished in recent years.
Pitino’s career and the St. John’s program appear to be intersecting at a time when they need each other. Louisville fired Pitino in October 2017 following an FBI investigation into college basketball, which eventually led to a job in Greece before taking the Iona job in 2020.
