It’s not often that college basketball head coaches have dinner together the night before their teams play. Yet, an exception will be made in Atlanta Friday night, when St. John’s coach Rick Pitino and Kentucky coach Mark Pope, a senior captain on Pitino’s 1996 NCAA championship team at UK, will join a few other former Wildcats players and coaches at a local restaurant. “There will be about seven of us there, including a few of ‘The Unforgettables,’ so it’s going be nice,” Pitino told Hoops HQ. Told that such a gathering is unusual, Pitino replied, “Yeah, but this is a special occasion.”
Indeed it is, for this is the first time Pitino will coach against Kentucky since 2016, during what turned out to be his final season at Louisville. It is yet another full-circle moment in the 73-year-old Hall of Famer’s long, storied, tumultuous career. It is also, by the way, a very important game for each team, both of whom have struggled at times while their respective coaches seek to blend drastically remade rosters. But given the storyline of Pitino going home again (sort of), the game itself feels like a subplot.
The matchup was made possible earlier this year when UCLA withdrew from the CBS Sports Classic. The event started in 2014 with a field of four teams — North Carolina, Ohio State and Kentucky were the others — that rotated matchups and sites. St. John’s was invited to be a onetime replacement for UCLA, although it’s possible the relationship will continue. The allure of Pitino coaching against Kentucky was enhanced by the fact that this season marks the 30th anniversary of that ’96 NCAA title which he and Pope shared.
Many coaches avoid going against friends unless they have to. But that was not the case with Pitino. “I’m the direct opposite of that,” he said. “If I lose, and I don’t know the guy really well, I’m totally pissed off. If I lose to my son, if I lose to a close friend, if I lose to my ex-player, I give him a big hug, and I’m happy for him.”
That’s a scenario Pitino would like to avoid when his 22nd-ranked Red Storm (6-3) take on the unranked Wildcats (7-4) at 12:30 p.m. ET. Both teams are works in progress. St. John’s has ten new players (seven transfers and three freshmen), and Kentucky has nine (five transfers and four freshmen). Each has beaten one top-35 KenPom team (Kentucky beat Indiana at home, St. John’s beat Baylor in Las Vegas), but they have lost to all the other top teams they faced.
Pitino isn’t feeling all that nostalgic about the impending matchup — “It would be a lot more nostalgic if it were in Rupp (Arena),” he said — but as the scheduled dinner the night before indicates, he is not averse to a little stroll down memory lane. He left a plum job coaching the New York Knicks in 1989 to take over a Kentucky program that was reeling from scandal and NCAA violations. He assembled a band of low-rated prospects who came to be called “The Unforgettables” and brought them to the 1992 East Regional Final, where they suffered their epic overtime loss to Duke. Four years later, Pitino coached Kentucky to its seventh national championship. They were the NCAA runner-up the following year.
A month after the 1997 NCAA Tournamnent ended, Pitino left to become head coach and president of the Boston Celtics. One of the reasons he did so was because the team had two lottery picks and the best chance at the No. 1 pick. That would have allowed him to build a franchise around Wake Forest center Tim Duncan, but the opportunity was lost when the lottery dealt the Celtics the third pick. “If it was anything other than a place like the Boston Celtics or the New York Knicks or the Lakes, I wouldn’t have done it,” Pitino said. “But it was a big mistake to gamble your future on a ping pong ball. That didn’t make much sense.”
Pitino has often called leaving Kentucky his biggest mistake, yet he stopped short of saying he regretted that decision. “It’s my biggest mistake, but I don’t say it’s a regret because I learned so much from failing,” he said. “Boston was the first time I really failed, and I think it made me so much better at what I do.”
December Big East Power Rankings: UConn Dominion, Seton Hall Rising
Hoops HQ’s Big East correspondent ranks the nation’s most top-heavy conference, featuring Hurley’s Huskies, Chase Ross’ one-man militia and two surprise contenders
Following his demise with the Celtics, Pitino wanted to return to college coaching. He wanted the Louisville job because he had enjoyed living in the state and still had many friends there, but he all but decided to go to Michigan because Louisville and Kentucky played an annual series, and he didn’t want to coach the Wildcats’ biggest rival in Rupp Arena. Pitino’s wife, Joanne, convinced him it was silly not to take the job because of something he would experience once every two years.
During his 17 seasons at Louisville, Pitino had some great moments — most notably the 2013 NCAA Championship, which made him the only coach in history to win titles at two different schools. When the school fired him in 2017 following a series of controversies, he was resigned to never coaching in college again. He tried to stay idle, but after just one season away from the game, Pitino agreed to become the head coach of Panathinalkos in the EuroLeague.
After a two-year stint in Greece, he returned to the States as the head coach at Iona, leading the Gaels to two NCAA Tournament appearances in three seasons. That success vaulted him to St. John’s, where last season he piloted the Red Storm to a Big East regular season championship. They earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament but lost in the second round to Arkansas.
Another prodigious transfer haul (thanks largely to the financial support of Mike Repole, a St. John’s alum and billionaire founder of Vitaminwater) sent St. John’s into the 2025-26 season with sky-high expectations. The team started out ranked No. 5 in the AP’s preseason Top 25 but has been steadily dropping following losses to Alabama, Iowa State and Auburn. The Red Storm is riding a three-game win streak into Saturday’s game and is ranked No. 23 in the NET.
St. John’s has the pieces for a deep March run. The question is not only how well those pieces fit, but whether Pitino can coax his players to play with the tenacity that has characterized so many of his teams. When Pitino says “I’m very fortunate because I’ve never had kids as nice as this as a whole,” it’s not hard to infer that he wishes that at times they would be a little less nice, and a lot more tough.
Patience has never been one of Pitino’s virtues, but in this portalized era, he doesn’t have much choice. “When you get eight or ten new players, you’re not going to be good early on,” he said. “The same thing happened to us last year. We lost two out of three games in The Bahamas (over Thanksgiving), and then we came home and went on an unbelievable run. So it took time for that team to develop, and it’s going to take time for this team to develop.”
Pope is working through many of the same challenges in Lexington, though his team has also been beset by injuries. Pope has been taking losses hard, and he practically flagellated himself during his press conference following Kentucky’s 83-66 loss to Michigan State at the Champions Classic on Nov. 18. In the days that followed, Pitino reached out to his former captain and gave him an old-school pep talk.
My Day With Rick Pitino: Get Up, Show Up, Try to Keep Up
The Hall of Fame coach, now 72 and in his second season at St. John’s, hasn’t slowed one bit
“I called him up and I told him, ‘Listen, man, you’re beating yourself up in front of the media too much. Don’t ever show weakness to the media,’ ” Pitino said. “He’s got a great team, but it just takes time. He felt early on that they were a much better shooting team than they are, and he found out they’re not. So he’s made all the good adjustments, and now they’re a great rebounding team. His defense has improved immensely the last two weeks. You get to find out your blemishes against good talent.”
Though St. John’s’ participation in the CBS Sports Classic appears to be one and done, Pitino said he would be interested in setting up a game in Rupp Arena. He proposed a home-and-home series with a return game to Madison Square Garden — “We even said we would go there first,” he said — but given how jammed Kentucky’s nonconference schedule is (including annual games against Louisville and Indiana), and given how much money UK makes from home games, the school balked at scheduling another away game.
Thus, it is possible that Saturday’s game will be the last time Pitino coaches against Kentucky — although if there’s one thing he has learned in this business, it’s that the future is impossible to predict. Despite the demands of modern-day coaching, Pitino said he’s “having a blast” and that he is not thinking about retirement. “Hopefully I’ll be coaching for three, four or five more years, God willing,” he said. If he has to lose on Saturday, then he will take some solace that it came against such a good friend, but let’s not get anything twisted. The thing that would really make this occasion special for Pitino would be for St. John’s to win.
Meet your guide
