Rick Pitino’s intriguing comments, Seton Hall success among Big East storylines

3. Rick Pitino is soiling St. John’s and their recruiting with his comments

Big East coaches have had their fair share of interesting press conferences, but Rick Pitino may have taken the cake for the wildest one after the loss to Seton Hall. Jaden Daly put out some quotes from the press conference and they are quite outlandish.

This was just one of them, calling your players slow is just not a way to make your athletes want to play for you it does the opposite. Pitino was pointing at his players for why his team is losing, rather than taking accountability for schemes, or not having the players motivated enough to go out and get the win. Comments like this are something recruits hear, and hear loudly, this alone will make this next recruiting cycle tough for the Red Storm. Even with NIL, players prefer not to be disrespected, and there has not been the success to balance out some of the comments Pitino has made. 

He also went out and doubled down on these comments later on, no apologies, nothing of the sort. We will see if this works and helps turn this team around, but it is just a bad look for Pitino to act this way following a tough loss. Recruits will ask questions about his press conferences when picking the Red Storm over other Big East programs, and Pitino may just lose players following this moment. Time will tell if this is a moment the basketball world will eventually forget about, but it just did not feel like a good look.