For the Pitinos, a family reunion is happening a bit before Thanksgiving.
Rick Pitino and St. John’s are set to face Richard Pitino and New Mexico at Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoon in a much-hyped coaching showdown between father and son.
Among those planning to attend are Rick’s daughter, Jacqueline, and another son, Ryan, who will sit behind their father’s bench as neutral observers.
“My wife [Joanne] and her sister and her best friend will sit behind Richard’s bench and will not be neutral,” Rick, 72, deadpanned Friday.
“She told my son the other day, ‘Richard, there’s no doubt who I’m rooting for. It’s you. You’re my blood. He’s not.’ It shows you how much she loves me and how much she loves Richard.”
That revelation, while made in jest, served as an example of the unique nature of Sunday’s early-season matinee between 3-0 teams, even as both Pitinos downplayed the oddity of facing each other.
It will be their fourth head-to-head meeting. Rick won the first two, with his Louisville team beating his son at FIU in 2012 and at Minnesota in 2014. Pitino and New Mexico then beat the elder Pitino’s Iona team in 2022.
“It’s not as weird as people think,” Richard, 42, said Friday.
“Grateful that my dad was willing to do this. As for playing my dad, it doesn’t even feel like a factor, honestly. This is the fourth time we’ve done it. There’s no extra motivation, extra anything. I mean, I’m excited to see him. I’m excited to see my mom.”
Still, returning to the Garden serves as something of a full-circle moment for Richard, who was a young child during his dad’s coaching stints with the Knicks in the 1980s, and who coached there as an assistant on his father’s Louisville staffs from 2007-09 and 2011-12.
Richard has “zero memories” of going to the Garden during the Knicks years, he said. His more vivid childhood memories revolve around his father’s time at Kentucky, where Rick coached from 1989-97 and won the first of his two national championships.
“It was a lot,” Richard recalled. “He [was] killing it. They’re winning big. That’s fanfare to the highest, highest extreme, and I never really liked it.
“I remember so often we would go out to eat … and there would be lines of Kentucky fans waiting for pictures, autographs, all those things,” he said. “I appreciated it, but it was never really for me.”
Richard said seeing his dad coach the Boston Celtics — whose winning-focused fan base was less blindly fanatical — from 1997-2001 was more formative in his own coaching journey.
As a college student at Providence, Richard doubled as an assistant coach for a high school basketball team in Rhode Island, and there was no turning back from there.
Richard is now in his 13th season as a college basketball coach and in his fourth at New Mexico. Last season, he led the Lobos to a Mountain West Conference championship and an NCAA Tournament berth for the first time in his tenure.
Rick, meanwhile, is in his second season at St. John’s, attempting to turn around a program with only three NCAA Tournament appearances since 2002. St. John’s went 20-13, including 11-9 against the loaded Big East, in Year 1 under the Hall-of-Fame coach but was not invited to the Big Dance.
This offseason, Rick overhauled a roster that lost its three leading scorers by adding prized transfers Kadary Richmond from Seton Hall and Deivon Smith from Utah.
Sunday marks the first true test of the season for St. John’s, which, at No. 22, is ranked for the first time since January 2019. It’s the first game at the Garden this season for the Johnnies, who steamrolled Fordham, Quinnipiac and Wagner in their first three games.
New Mexico, meanwhile, already boasts a ranked win over then-No. 22 UCLA.
The Lobos’ offense runs through junior point guard Donovan Dent, whose 19.0 points and 9.7 assists per game lead the team. Nelly Junior Joseph, a 6-10 senior averaging 18.0 points and 12.3 rebounds, starred at Iona for three years under the elder Pitino before transferring to New Mexico last year.
Like his son, Rick said he does not expect the spectacle around Sunday’s familial face-off to be a distraction.
“During the game, you really don’t know each other is on the sidelines at that point,” Rick said. “You’re so focused on stopping the opponent, stopping the players, that you don’t really pay attention to coaches. So, before the game, certainly, after the game, certainly, but during the game, there’s very little notice of the other coaches.”
That said, the meeting has brought renewed attention to one of college basketball’s most famous families — and some of its recent headlines.
Most notably, Rick said in February that he wanted Richard to eventually replace him as the head coach at St. John’s, where he is under contract for four years after this one.
“I thought, ‘Oh there’s my dad saying another insane thing, and hopefully nobody’s listening to him.’ I think he was probably messing around,” Richard said Friday. “I don’t know where that came from. That’s never, ever been a conversation we have had.”
Last month, Richard flew to New York and joined his father for Game 4 of the World Series, with the pair dressing in Yankees jerseys and sitting behind the home dugout in the Bronx.
Before that 11-4 win by the Yankees, Richard visited his father at St. John’s.
“I walk in there and they’re practicing, and I could tell all the players are looking at me like, ‘We don’t like this guy, because all he does is hype up your team like you’re the Boston Celtics,’” Richard said.
“That’s what he does. He’s always done it. He always picks an early game that he feels will motivate the team.”
Sunday’s game benefits the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which supports veterans and families affected by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The charity is personal to the Pitino family, as Rick’s best friend and brother-in-law, Billy Minardi, was killed at the World Trade Center.
Although they’ll be foes on Sunday, Rick said he and Richard planned to go out with their family on Saturday night.
“If we lose, my team will be very disappointed, but I’ll be very happy for my son,” Rick said. “I’ve flown out to New Mexico and taken red-eyes back just to see him, so I root for him all the time. I’m a gigantic fan of his. I hope St. John’s wins, but if they don’t, I’ll be a proud father.”
