TIMEOUT: Rick Pitino
Staff writer Arthur Staple
July 10, 2005
Rick Pitino, 52, and the Louisville Cardinals will begin play in the Big East this fall. Pitino, who played for St. Dominic High in Oyster Bay and is a former Knicks coach ('87-88 through '88-89) and Providence coach ('85-86 through '86-87) , won the NCAA championship with Kentucky in 1996. Staff writer Arthur Staple talked with Pitino at the ABCD Camp in Teaneck, N.J., last week.
Q: What's it like to be back in the Big East?
A: It's a shock for me. When I started at Louisville, in Conference USA, I was visiting some cities I'd never been to before, and that was fine. But when our AD said this was a possibility, I just couldn't fathom it. It's awesome for our program, especially football. We have a world-class football program and all we were doing was losing money and going to Liberty Bowls every year. For football, it's a godsend. For basketball, as it is for the rest of the schools, it's a nightmare. But hopefully a good nightmare, if there can be such a thing.
Q: Is the biggest worry for you that a great team might stumble in the regular season and be left out of the NCAA Tournament?
A: It's definitely a concern, and it was even before we got here. Look at West Virginia: If they don't win a couple games in the Big East Tournament, they don't get in. And they had us down, a half away from the Final Four. I can't predict what the NCAA will do. I hope they'll consider taking nine, even 10 teams. The schedule will be so tough, the whole Big East will be on the bubble until the final two weeks of the season.
Q: Does that mean you have to play a weaker non-conference schedule?
A: We always play Kentucky, and we try to play some other regional rivals - Florida, Tennessee, Miami. There's nothing we can do about that.
Q: What about the prospect of this 16-team Big East splitting into two conferences - one for the football/basketball powers and one for the non-football schools?
A: That won't happen while I'm a coach. If it does, it's five, six, seven years down the road.
Q: What would make this a more equitable situation?
A: Eventually, we have to have everybody play each other once and have an 18-game conference schedule (which would include three home-and-homes with regional emphasis). In the next TV contract, everybody has to play everybody. It's the strongest, deepest basketball league in the history of the game.
Q: Does it make you wish it hadn't come together?
A: It's a great thing for Louisville. The school has a top-10 tradition in basketball, but what it's always lacked is a great conference to be identified with, like the UCLAs, the Kentuckys. Now we're part of the Big East, so you take that unbelievable school tradition, you take 19,500 season ticket-holders and you put them in the Big East. It's really something special.
Q: And you have a game with St. John's at Madison Square Garden. How special will that be?
A: I never expected it. We still have a home here, so much family here, it makes the Louisville job that much more special to me personally. I get to end my coaching career in the Big East, which I never thought would happen. It's a nice twist.
Q: You sound as if you know when the end of your career is coming. Have you picked a year?
A: I've been coaching 31 years. That window's going to shut soon. I always only wanted to coach while I could do five individual workouts a day, see the recruits, everything. I don't want to do this when my 50s are done, that's for sure
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