Over the course of his distinguished college basketball coaching career, Rick Pitino has won national championships with two different programs and led a third to a Final Four. He has written several books and been a fixture of the motivational speaking circuit. He has even played himself in movies like “He Got Game” and “Blue Chips.”
On Thursday night, though, he appeared on a different kind of stage.
Less than a week after his St. John’s team won its first outright Big East championship in 40 years, Pitino was a guest on NBC’s “The Tonight Show” with host Jimmy Fallon to discuss his team’s season, share some interesting stories from his life and career, and sing a sea shanty (yes, you read that right).
Appearing on the show the same night as actors Alan Cumming and Parker Posey, Pitino recounted how he accepted one of his first college coaching jobs, as an assistant coach under Jim Boeheim at Syracuse – on his wedding night. With no job at the time, Pitino told his wife he’d step away for an hour to interview for the position. Three hours later, he returned.
“I said ‘I’ve got great news — I got a job,’” Pitino said. “Now, I didn’t tell her I was interviewing for the Syracuse University job. I said ‘Two problems. One, it’s Syracuse, New York.’ She says ‘Upstate New York? Syracuse? With 120 inches of snow?’ I said ‘Yes, but it’s a great job and Jim Boeheim’s terrific.’”
The other piece of bad news? He was starting the job immediately and had to go on a recruiting trip the following day, meaning the newly wedded couple’s honeymoon to Hawaii was going to have to be postpooned.
Thankfully for the Pitinos, the visit proved to be worth it. Pitino’s post-wedding recruiting jaunt was to Cincinnati to see a promising young player named Louis Orr, who signed with Syracuse and went on to become an All-American for the Orange, as well as one of 25 members of the program’s all-century team.
After two years at Syracuse, Pitino got his first full-time head coaching gig at Boston University, and the rest, as they say, is history.
“We never had a honeymoon to Hawaii, but we’ve had quite a few trips after that,” Pitino said, with a smile.
Pitino later joked that his wife “left me a year later” when Fallon asked how long they stayed together. He and his wife, Joanne, are set to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary next year.
Pitino also shared a story from even earlier in his life, when he and his friend Al Skinner, who went on to become the coach at Boston College, decided to play college basketball at UMass because of the opportunity to be teammates with the legendary Julius Erving.
There was one problem, though — back when the Long Island natives began their college careers, freshmen had to play on freshmen teams. By the time they joined the school’s varsity squad as sophomores in 1971, Erving had left college early to sign a contract with the Virginia Squires of the American Basketball Association.
Pitino wasn’t St. John’s’ lone representative on the NBC airwaves Thursday night. In the days leading up to the show’s taping, it was announced that Pitino’s entire Red Storm team would be with him, raising the natural question of how a coach and his 13-player squad would all fit on “The Tonight Show” stage.
As it turned out, it was for a pre-recorded sketch, with Fallon, Pitino and his St. John’s players singing a sea shanty that was a play on the Red Storm’s nickname.
In its second season under Pitino, St. John’s is No. 6 in the latest USA TODAY Sports Coaches Poll, its highest ranking since the 1990-91 season. With a 26-4 record and a conference title already locked up, the Red Storm will wrap up its regular season Saturday with a game at No. 20 Marquette.