Last February, Rick Pitino suggested he wanted his son Richard to succeed him one day as the head coach at St. John’s.
“I personally want him to stay at New Mexico. I want him to stay at New Mexico until I leave St. John’s and he can take my place then,” the elder Pitino, 72, told reporters after a game.
With Richard and his New Mexico Lobos (3-0) set to face Rick and No. 22 St. John’s (3-0) on Sunday at Madison Square Garden, the son was asked what he thought about his father’s comments.
“I thought, oh there’s my dad saying another insane thing, hopefully nobody’s listening to him,” Richard, who is 1-2 coaching against his father, said Friday on a Zoom call with reporters. “I think he was probably messing around. I’m not sure where that came from. That’s never, ever been a conversation that we’ve had.”
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Richard doesn’t think his father, a Naismith Hall of Fame coach who led Kentucky and Louisville to NCAA championships, is going anywhere anytime soon and that coaching “keeps him young.”
“Yeah, I have no idea how long he’s going to coach,” Richard said. “What I will say is he’s 72 years old, and I think the way that he lives his life and the way that he coaches, it’s inspiring….You have a lot of complainers out there, and for a 72-year-old man, he’s never complaining.
“I think he knows that coaching keeps him young, keeps him busy, and I think that he wants to do that as long as he’s healthy and he is healthy, so I know he’s really enjoying it, and I don’t see him slowing down anytime soon.”
Asked if being in the Big East and competing against coaches like Dan Hurley, who has won the last two NCAA championships, motivates his dad, Richard said his father is more motivated by trying to get St. John’s back to the upper echelons of college basketball.
“I don’t know if Danny Hurley motivates him, or any other coaches motivate him,”…
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