Rick Pitino is one step nearer to school basketball’s prime nationwide teaching honor.
The St. John’s coach was named one among 4 finalists for Naismith Coach of the Yr, becoming a member of Auburn’s Bruce Pearl, Houston’s Kelvin Sampson and Duke’s John Scheyer.
Monday’s announcement adopted a yr by which Pitino led St. John’s to a 31-5 file, its first outright Huge East regular-season championship since 1985 and its first Huge East Match crown since 2000.
St. John’s was a No. 2 seed within the NCAA Match, marking its first journey to the Huge Dance since 2019. By rolling to an 83-53 victory over No. 15 Omaha within the first spherical, the Pink Storm picked up their NCAA Match win in 25 years.
The season got here to a sudden finish Saturday, nonetheless, when No. 10 Arkansas upset the Johnnies, 75-66, within the second spherical.
A St. John’s coach has by no means gained the Naismith award.
Pitino, who simply completed his second season at St. John’s, was already named the Huge East Coach of the Yr — his first time successful the award regardless of having success in previous stints at Windfall and Louisville.
He has by no means gained Naismith Coach of the Yr, although he was named the John Wood Nationwide Coach of the Yr and the NABC Coach of the Yr in 1987, a season by which he took Windfall to the Ultimate 4.
Pitino, 72, faces formidable competitors for the Naismith honor, which might be introduced April 6 in the course of the Ultimate 4 in San Antonio.
Pearl led Auburn to a regular-season championship within the loaded SEC and to the highest total seed within the NCAA Match. Sampson and Scheyer each gained their conferences’ respective regular-season and event championships and are additionally No. 1 seeds on the Huge Dance.
Monday’s finalists emerged from a beforehand introduced group of semifinalists that included Florida’s Todd Golden, Michigan State’s Tom Izzo, Missouri’s Dennis Gates, Louisville’s Pat Kelsey, Texas Tech’s Grant McCasland and Drake’s Ben McCollum.
The finalists for girls’s faculty basketball’s Naismith Coach of the Yr are South Carolina’s Daybreak Staley, USC’s Lindsay Gottlieb, UCLA’s Cori Shut and TCU’s Mark Campbell.
