March Madness: Iona’s Rick Pitino Becomes 3rd College Coach To Lead 5 Programs To NCAA Tournament

Iona head coach Rick Pitino yells to his team in the first half of an NCAA college basketball game … [+] against Fairfield during the finals of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament, Saturday, March 13, 2021, in Atlantic City, N.J. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On the second Saturday of March 2020, Iona College hired Rick Pitino — shocking many in the college basketball community.

Although Pitino was already in the Naismith Hall of Fame and considered among the greatest college coaches ever, he came to Iona with the baggage of multiple scandals occurring on his watch at Louisville, where he was ousted in 2017 amid an F.B.I. investigation in which two assistant coaches under Pitino were accused of funneling money from the school’s apparel sponsor, Adidas, to high school recruits. Pitino has long said that he did not know about the scheme, or another involving a staffer soliciting prostitutes and strippers for players and recruits.

Still, those closest to Pitino believed he deserved another chance and would restore Iona’s winning tradition.

“He will lift Iona’s program,” Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, a longtime friend and colleague of Pitino, said when Pitino was hired.

“They’ve had a good program. Coach [Tim] Cluess did an unbelievable job, so it’s not like they’re rock bottom. They’ve had a real good run. But he’s a great coach. He’s won everywhere he’s been. He won in Greece, he won at BU, he won at Providence, he’s won almost everywhere he’s been.”

And now he’s won at Iona, too.

Almost a year to the day after he was hired, Pitino became the third Division 1 men’s coach to lead five programs to the NCAA Tournament when the No. 9-seeded Gaels beat No. 7 Fairfield, 60-51, in the MAAC Tournament championship game at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. Redshirt seniors Asante Gist (18 points) and Isaiah Ross (13) combined for 31 points as the Gaels won their fourth game in four days.

“It’s pretty darn special,” Pitino said. “I wanted to coach at a small Catholic school to end my career. To me, it’s a great way to end a very long career.”

Pitino, 68, joins Tubby Smith and Lon Kruger in that select club after previously taking Boston University, Providence, Kentucky and Louisville to the NCAA Tournament. He led three of those programs to the Final Four — Providence, Kentucky and Louisville — and won NCAA championships with the Wildcats in 1996 and the Cardinals in 2013 (although the latter was vacated).

“The NCAA investigated fully,” Pitino said of his time at Louisville. “Louisville is a great program. Unfortunately, some people in life did some things wrong and a lot of innocent people suffered. Not only me, but other people behind the program. I deserved to be fired.” He added that he was glad Iona have him another opportunity.

In his first year at the MAAC school, Pitino led the Gaels to their fifth straight conference tournament title after Cluess did so from 2016-19 before stepping down due to health concerns. Iona, which won its 13 conference tournament title, is projected as a No. 15 seed according to ESPN’s Joe Lunardi and their up-tempo style could present problems for some 2 seed in the first round.

After Pitino was fired, he spent two seasons coaching professionally in Greece, then was hired at Iona, where his first season has been mostly dominated by the virus.

The Gaels paused three times this season for separate coronavirus issues, including one pause that lasted 51 days — the longest in Division 1 — and another that lasted 17 days.

Pitino estimated that half of his team has had the virus this season, and in January said that some of his players had shown symptoms.

Pitino himself tested positive in January after getting his first shot of the vaccine. He said he quarantined for 10 days in an apartment on campus after he tested positive that month.

Meantime, Pitino and his staff also rebuilt the roster with eight new players, including 6-foot-9 freshman forward Nelly Junior Joseph, a native of Nigeria who won MAAC Rookie of the Year honors and went for 12 points and 11 rebounds in the title game.

Junior Joseph grew up in Benin City, Nigeria, attended school in Japan for a few years, and then returned home to join NBA Academy Africa, an elite basketball training center in Senegal for the top prospects from throughout Africa, before earning a scholarship to Iona. Along the way he participated in some high-profile international basketball events, including Basketball Without Borders, Next Generation Showcase at the Final Four and the G League Winter Showcase, where he made an impression on college and professional scouts.

When Pitino got the job he asked his former Louisville player Gorgui Dieng if he knew of any good players in Africa, and Dieng recommended Junior Joseph, who committed to Iona a month after Pitino took the job.

Pitino said in October the pandemic helped his staff recruit.

“If it wasn’t for COVID, we couldn’t have brought in the largest recruiting class in my history as a basketball coach…because if everybody was allowed to visit different places, we couldn’t get eight guys, one from Germany, one from Sweden, one from Rwanda, Nigeria, New York, North Carolina, Florida,” he said in a Zoom interview with Vin Parise.

“They just had to make a decision. I think six out of the eight did not know where Iona was, what county or what state it was in. So COVID helped us in recruiting. And so not only did we look at the glass half full, we looked at filling it up right away.”

Now Pitino is headed back to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2017 and Iona is once again representing the MAAC in March Madness.