Iona named Rick Pitino as its new basketball coach in late March, and in the five months since then, the 67-year-old has pronounced himself eager to get back into the college game.
You might recall that Pitino was forced out at Louisville three years ago after the FBI charged that the Cardinals' coaching staff had facilitated the payment of $100,000 by Adidas to the family of a recruit. Pitino has always insisted he knew nothing of any such payment, though last spring he went as far as saying he "deserved to be fired" for transgressions that occurred on his watch. He coached professional basketball in Greece for the last two seasons.
While a Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference program might seem like a curious fit for Pitino, Iona possessed at least two advantages in landing its next head coach. Taking a job in Westchester County, New York, constitutes something of a homecoming for Pitino, and his new school's president, Seamus Carey, has known the coach since his days in Kentucky.
The new coach inherits a team that posted a 12-17 record last year. On the one hand, Iona has reached six of the last eight NCAA tournaments. On the other hand, the Gaels have done so in a MAAC that has produced just seven KenPom top-100 teams over that span. Iona's last six trips into the field of 68 netted no seed better than a No. 13 and, not coincidentally, zero tournament wins.
In short, it's not the type of program that customarily lands a coach who has one official national title to go along with one vacated championship. After stops at Providence, Kentucky, Louisville and, of course, two in the NBA, Pitino will now be harking back to his days in the 1970s as the head coach at Boston University. It's an unusual career turn, certainly, but it's not entirely unheard of.
The Tarkanian parallel
One precedent to Pitino taking the Iona job is provided by the late-career path of Jerry Tarkanian. The coach who had won the 1990 national championship at UNLV left in 1992 after a series of NCAA investigations. Tarkanian next coached 20 games for the San Antonio Spurs, took two years off and sued the NCAA before surfacing at age 65 as the new head coach at his alma mater, Fresno State.
Under Tarkanian, the Bulldogs attained what still stands as their highest level of on-court success in the last 25 years. Fresno State was ranked in the polls during four different seasons and earned two No. 9 seeds in the NCAA tournament. Conversely, Fresno State has never been ranked since Tarkanian's departure in 2002, nor have the Bulldogs repeated the feat of securing a single-digit seed.
There are, however, asterisks next to Fresno State's records from the Tarkanian years. The program was the subject of an FBI probe into allegations of point-shaving, and the NCAA slapped the Bulldogs with a four-year probation stemming in part from a Fresno Bee investigation of academic fraud.
That, of course, is not the kind of parallel Iona is expecting from Pitino, but the Gaels would certainly welcome a single-digit tournament seed and/or the program's first AP ranking since 1980 (when the coach was Jim Valvano).
Pitino's Louisville teams tended to be better than their recruiting rankings
Isaiah Ross and Asante Gist will return as seniors for the Gaels after combining for 34 starts in the backcourt last season. Also returning is Dylan van Eyck, a 6-foot-9 senior who made 13 starts in 2019-20.
Pitino has additionally been busy on Zoom in the offseason, visiting recruits' living rooms virtually and bulking up an already existing class that wound up including no fewer than eight new players. This group includes five true freshmen (Johan Crafoord, Dwayne Koroma, Nelly Junior Joseph, Ryan Meyers and Omar Rowe) and three junior college transfers (Berrick JeanLouis, Tahlik Chavez and Osborn Shema). In addition, New Mexico State transfer Robert Brown will be eligible after sitting out last season.
There may not be any particularly high-profile names in the recruiting class, but that's not as much of a departure for Louisville-era Pitino as you might assume. The Cardinals' recruiting under Pitino might be termed very good or occasionally excellent, yet it was by no means elite on the order of a Kentucky or a Duke.
From 2009 right up until the year before Pitino's departure almost a decade later, the Cardinals didn't sign a single national top-20 recruit. Nevertheless, the results on the floor spoke for themselves. The Cardinals were consistently at or near the top of the Big East, the American and, ultimately, the ACC.
An ex-NBA coach like Pitino can at a minimum get a foot in the door with players who otherwise might not even consider Iona. Those recruits may question how long Pitino will really be in New Rochelle, but for his part, the first-year coach has insisted to my colleague Jeff Borzello that he's "not looking to move on." If Pitino can convince enough recruits that this is indeed the case, experience suggests he will be able to get the most out of those players.
The Gaels want to take the next step
Iona hasn't won an NCAA tournament game since March 7, 1980, and even that victory was later vacated due to NCAA violations. Nevertheless, the team has earned ample opportunities to snap that string. The Gaels under former coach Tim Cluess carved a niche as the best overall program in a MAAC that typically ranked near the top of the bottom half of Division I's conferences.
Assuming Pitino stays for a few years, Iona has a shot at elevating that profile. Pitino's Louisville teams excelled on defense while taking care of the ball and crashing the glass on offense. His reputation as a perimeter-oriented coach was less justified in his last few seasons with the Cardinals, but perhaps that aspect of his bio will return to the fore now that he leads the Gaels.
Pitino said he learned a great deal about coaching offense during his two years in Greece, and a resurgent Iona program running sets imported from or inspired by Europe would certainly make a great story. It could happen. The coach is nothing if not seasoned, his name speaks for itself, and there's plenty of basketball talent to be recruited right on his doorstep. If this really is his last coaching stop, Pitino has a decent chance to make it a memorable one.