CINCINNATI — Richard Pitino has moved a lot in his life.
As the son of a hall of fame college basketball coach, Pitino moved from Providence to Kentucky to Boston to Louisville early in his life. Then he went off to Providence for college and decided to follow in his father’s footsteps.
He coached at Charleston, Northeastern, Duquesne, Louisville and Florida before becoming an associate head coach for his dad. In 2012, he took his first head coaching job at Florida International. After one year there, he moved onto Minnesota in the Big Ten where he coached nine years and was the 2017 Big Ten coach of the year before being fired for limited NCAA Tournament success after the 2020-21 season. He was immediately hired by New Mexico and used the new-fangled transfer portal NIL culture to his advantage.
This is what would eventually open the eyes of those at Xavier if Sean Miller decided to move on. Back-to-back Mountain West tournament titles that put the Lobos in the NCAA tournament didn’t hurt, either. The Lobos were a remarkable 17-3 this year in conference and spent most of the season in the Top 25.
When Miller’s Muskies beat Texas in the First Four and lost to Illinois, Miller was off to Austin to take over the Longhorns. That domino set in motion a very fast search since the portal for transfers opened the following Monday, March 24.
Because Xavier athletic director Greg Christopher was on top of things and had been following Pitino’s career arc, he knew that if he became available, he’d be a great candidate and someone to consider.
“He has proven himself as a winner as a head coach at New Mexico and has an impressive resume of success before that as a head coach at Minnesota,” Christopher said. “His success as an assistant stood out, especially his time working for his father, Rick Pitino, at Louisville and Billy Donovan at Florida. We had tremendous interest in our head coaching position. It became clear that Richard was the right fit for Xavier to take us to championship success in the Big East and NCAA Tournament.”
Christopher admitted that how he handled his unceremonious departure from Minnesota and rediscovered himself for a year with Billy Donovan in the NBA played a role in considering him for this job at this moment in time.
“He’s incredibly competitive. Some of what fuels that is how he’s been humbled,” Christopher said. “That was an important factor to me. How you handle adversity is really telling. And we all face challenges. Handled the right way, adversity makes you better, and that is what’s happened with Richard. Richard has now been a Division I head coach at four schools totaling 13 years. He’s already logged 247 career wins. So, this winning head coach is taking over a program that expects win. Xavier basketball has a passionate, loyal and generous fan base. Xavier basketball has a track record of winning with 26 conference championships, 28 NCAA Tournament appearances over the last four decades. And I’m very confident Xavier basketball will absolutely keep marching forward to new heights with Coach Pitino.”
On March 23, Pitino’s New Mexico Lobos were eliminated by Tom Izzo’s Michigan State Spartans and Pitino became available. Three days later, Xavier had its 20th head coach in program history.
“Cincinnati is home now,” Pitino said. “It’s kind of like an army brat. There were kind of like three different phases of my life, I would say, kind of growing up Lexington, Kentucky. But then I thought the formative years of my life were way more Boston. Wife’s from Boston. Lot of my close friends are from Boston. But then (dad) left for Louisville. Then I started my professional journey but I would always go back to Louisville whenever I had time. So kind of three phases.
“I would not have left New Mexico unless it was for a place that played in front of amazing fans,” Pitino said. “That was something special for me to coach in an iconic building like The Pit, and I was not going to go to a place unless they really, really cared about college basketball. It is an advantage. How much of an advantage, I don’t know. But I do know there is nothing more special than walking out of a locker room and seeing 10,000 people pouring their heart and soul into helping you.”
Pitino knows Cincinnati is one of the very best college basketball towns in America. It’s something his dad knows, too. It’s why Rick changed his mind on his son leaving a budding program in New Mexico for Cincinnati because he knew that Xavier would support him.
“I’m going to do my very best to get to know the people who come to our games,” Richard said. “I think they’re going to see what we’re all about. They’re going to understand that I want to represent them in a first class manner. Our players are going to play extremely hard. That is something that our fans deserve, and you will not win if you don’t play hard in this conference. So, We’re going to work our butts off over the next couple of months to put together a team and a program that reflects this amazing fan base.”
While only 42, Pitino has already had a vast array of career experiences, thanks in part to his dad but also because he’s proven he can work in very different environments.
“I think it’s not that I didn’t value others. I definitely think I did that at Minnesota, but I think I truly learned the importance of being able to band together and build an army that can help you, and I think that’s a responsibility of a head coach, is hiring the right people, empowering them, not trying to do it all yourself, Fortunately, the last two years, we won championships, and it was just as much about my staff and my players, boosters, supporters, fans, as it was about me, and I’m not sure I valued that as much when I was younger.”
“They’re all different. First one at FIU, no transfers,” Pitino said. “They had to sit out. So we were like, All right, we’re just going to take a couple of high major transfers try to build a culture. Winning would be the last thing we’d really think about. Minnesota was same kind of thing where they had more success (in previous years). They went to the NCAA tournament but they wanted more. But it was going to take some time to kind of build from the ground up.”
Now, Xavier. And now for the tough part, winning at a basketball school where NIL has been limited in the past.
“This one’s totally different because of the transfer portal and the NIL stuff, just you feel like you taking a whole new job,” Pitino said. “But people still think you can do it quickly, like it’s not as easy as they think, but it’s possible.”
Pitino is all about the ROI now. He’s not about to disparage or discredit those who are putting hard-earned dollars and emotional equity into a program with the hopes that Pitino can be the one to finally lead them to the Final Four and multiple Big East titles.
“We’ve got so much great support,” Pitino said. “Show them the return on their investment, make sure we bring in the right people to make them proud. And when and when you do that, it’s just amazing how many more opportunities that you get. So I’m up for the challenge. I’ve had a lot of success in the NIL portal world, and it’s just all about making sure that you endear yourself to the right people and get them to understand that they truly are appreciated. And this is what we’re going to do with their support.”
Indeed, on March 17, 2021, less than 24 hours after he was fired by Minnesota, Pitino immediately found success in recruiting by attacking the newly-formed transfer portal. Pitino brought future All-Mountain West players Jaelen House (Arizona State) and Jamal Mashburn Jr. (Minnesota) to Albuquerque as foundational pieces for the team. In total, Pitino brought nine incoming recruits to Albuquerque.
He’s going to have to do that again, with only two players on the current Xavier basketball roster.
Sean Miller reportedly left Xavier because of limited resources and commitment to the NIL pool of money needed to lure Division I caliber players.
“Well, I think people have to understand, everybody has money, right? And everybody wants to take transfers. So for us, yes, rev share and NIL are super important as everybody knows, but our evaluations – they’ve gotta be as good as it gets,” Pitino told me. “Sometimes you’re evaluating kids who didn’t play a lot. So you gotta figure out that piece. So you really gotta do your homework, but everybody’s doing it right now. It’s all one-year free agency. So ideally, coaches really want to build from the ground up, but you’re not going to do that as much anymore. But still, you’re trying to, you still are recruiting people that fit what you’re trying to do. And you can get some guys right away, and you really can, but everybody’s trying to do that right now.”
Pitino knows you can’t just throw money at the players and expect to form a great basketball culture, something Xavier has taken great pride in over the last five decades.
“I want them to cash bigger checks as they get older,” Pitino said. “NIL is great, but we want them to play basketball for a long time. We want them thinking 30, 40 years ahead. We want them to get a degree from here and when they’re done playing basketball, be great fathers, be great businessmen, be smart with their money. So although NIL is super important, that you will not get players if you don’t have a competitive (culture).
“It’s not real hard to sell a vision. We don’t want to run a bunch of set plays and walk the ball before now they get a push through when they get tired. We’ve got to practice it every single day. I did make a shift. When I went from Minnesota to New Mexico, I changed kind of the way that we played, especially the offensive side of it. Not as many set plays, honestly, similar to what Coach Miller ran here in the past. We talked a lot about it. We both got it from Gonzaga, learning from them a little bit. So it’s hard, but it’s a fun way to play.”
Speaking of style, Pitino is a little bit of Nolan Richardson’s “40 minutes of hell” to Kelvin Sampson’s Houston ball attack to Mark Few’s fast break, up-tempo game all rolled into one.
“Offensively, defensively, all of it will be kind of married and aligned together,” Pitino said. “Defensively. We want disruption. We want you extremely uncomfortable, whether it’s when you dribble the ball, whether it’s when you try to go in the lane, whether you throw it in the post or ball screens or handoffs. We don’t want you to be comfortable. We averaged over nine steals per game. We were always very good at blocking shots. So, depending on the personnel, from a ball screen defense, defense standpoint, but we hard-hedged everything.
“We trapped in the middle of the court. We wanted to be somewhat of a unorthodox game. Took a lot from Houston. I recruited a kid out of Beaumont, Texas, and when I was going back to Houston to fly out, I reached out to coach Sampson, and I said, ‘Do you mind if I watch practice? And that really shaped a lot of my defensive principles. Now he’s maybe one of the best defensive coaches ever, and so is my dad, and the two of them have certainly helped me with that regard.”
What is a realistic expectation for Pitino’s first year on Victory Parkway?
“We want to build a championship program,” Pitino told me. “We really do, and certainly not ideal to have to fill a whole roster in this time, but I think we can certainly be at a much stronger point in a couple of weeks than we’re at right now. Coach Miller did a great job in the three years he was here to obviously go to two NCAA Tournaments, go to the NIT.
“We want to be in the fight. We do. I don’t care how many players we have when I took the job. I was very, very appreciative of the last two years I had in New Mexico. And I tell you what, you get on a ladder, you cut down the nets, that’s that is addicting, and I want to do it again. So in my mind, we want to compete for Big East titles every single year. We know it’s going to be hard. We got so much respect for every single opponent. But we got some work to do.”
Let the work begin.
