Rick Pitino Says The Noise Linking Him To Other Jobs Pales In Comparison to His Time At Kentucky

When it comes to college basketball, Rick Pitino has seen and done about everything there is to see and do.

So with his Iona team having wrapped up the No. 1 seed in the MAAC Tournament, Pitino isn’t surprised to see his name continuously linked to higher-profile Division 1 jobs, whether it be St. John’s, Georgetown or other places.

After all, he was essentially exonerated in November by the Independent Accountability Resolution Process (IARP) in the Louisville infractions case dating to 2017, and now Pitino appears to be even more desirable as a coach at a high-major program going forward. He got no show case, no penalty, nothing.

Yet he says the noise around his potential free agency — he has no buyout on his current contract at Iona — pales in comparison to his time at Kentucky, where he won the NCAA championship in 1996.

“Well, magnify it by 10 and that’s what it was like when I was at Kentucky,” Pitino, 70, said Wednesday on a call with reporters. “One year I was offered seven different NBA jobs, so that in and itself was distracting. When you’re at Kentucky and you’re rumored for a pro job, you’re magnified.

“So here it’s only internet noise.”

Pitino insists his players aren’t distracted by all the rumblings surrounding his future, either.

“The one thing I can assure you of is, the players pay absolutely zero attention to that,” he said.

“Now other people pay attention to it, but the staff, myself and the players pay no attention. The internet is not going to hire a coach, I can assure you. It never has and it never will.”

Pitino, of course, left Kentucky for the Celtics in 1997 and then in 2001 came back to the college ranks at Louisville for 17 years before three scandals forced the school to finally fire him him 2017. His 2013 team won the NCAA championship but the title was vacated due to the federal investigation into bribery in college basketball (for which the IARP exonerated Pitino).

He ended up taking a two-year detour in Greece coaching Panathinaikos. Pitino has been at Iona since 2020 — he lives nearby on the third hole of the Winged Foot Golf Club — and is seeking his second NCAA Tournament appearance in three years. The Gaels (22-7, 15-3 MAAC) are ranked No. 58 by the NET and are currently projected as a 12 seed (against No. 5 Miami) by ESPN’s Joe Lunardi.

No higher seed will want to see Pitino and Iona as their first-round opponent.

Pitino has often maintained that he’s not a fan of the one-bid league, and especially doesn’t like the fact that there is no homecourt advantage in the MAAC Tournament. Unlike, say the NEC or America East, the tournament is held at a neutral site in Atlantic City, N.J.

“I also don’t like the fact that the No. 1 seed or 2 seed [doesn’t have] any advantage at all, whether it’s at the end or in the beginning but that doesn’t take away from the excellence of the MAAC in terms of the play,” he said.

“What’s exciting about it, is anybody can win. Just look at the run Saint Peter’s went on last year. Did it surprise me that run? It shocked the hell out of me, only because not that Saint Peter’s wasn’t capable of doing it but because they did it against Purdue and Kentucky with a 6-foot-7 center [KC Ndefo]. So that was the amazing thing to me because they went against two gigantic teams and the [national] player of the year [Oscar Tshiebwe].”

Since 2000, Iona has been to the NCAA Tournament 10 times, while during that same period, Georgetown has also been 10 times and St. John’s five.

The Gaels have appeared in the Big Dance 15 times overall, and their combined record is 1–15. Iona’s only NCAA Tournament victory to date took place in 1980, but it was vacated by the NCAA due to their star center, Jeff Ruland, having signed a contract with an agent for professional representation a few months prior. Thus, NCAA record books attribute to them an 0-15 record in NCAA tournament games.

After getting upset a year ago by Rider in the MAAC quarterfinals a year ago, Pitino and his team want another shot at the MAAC’s automatic bid.

“No more motivated than last year,” he said. ‘I mean, we tried it last year and no more motivated than the other teams that are competing in this.”

He circled back to the pressure of playing in a one-bid league vs. a multi-bid league like the SEC or Big East, where he previously coached.

“The pressure for all of us in this tournament is greater than most places,” he said. “If I was at Louisville or Kentucky right now and it was a normal season, we’d be saying “We have to win it to get a better seed. Let’s get a 2 seed instead of a 3 seed.’”

Pitino beefed up his schedule to bolster its case as an at-large team with games against Santa Clara, New Mexico (where his son Richard coaches) and SMU (in Hawaii), but lost all of those games.

His team has also been beset by injuries to Louisville transfer Quinn Slazinski and freshman Sadiku Ibine Ayo.

“We tried to make our schedule as such that even if we lost we could still get a bid but when we lost to Santa Clara and we lost in Hawaii, it pretty much sealed our fate,” he said.

Now the future is right in front of Pitino and his Gaels. He says there will be no distractions despite fans of other programs openly referring to him as their next coach on Twitter.

“For me it’s all about basketball,” he said “…Let’s get down to Atlantic City and win. We’re putting in 12-13 hour days right now and to think about anything except winning would be an injustice.”

He added: “We’re going to be the favorite, no question…but anybody could beat anybody on any given night.”

If the Gaels manage to win the MAAC and make the Big Dance, expect to hear the drumbeat for Pitino to take over at a Georgetown or a St. John’s get even louder.

It won’t be anything new for the man who has seen and done it all.