Look.
We all know why Rick Pitino’s here.
We all know why Pitino, comfortably coaching in Greece, needed to get back to college basketball.
The man needs a ring.
Yes, it’s surprising. The coach is an icon in college basketball. But he’s never won a national championship. At least, he hasn’t won the real one—the one NIT champions win.
Rick Pitino has made the Final Four once. In 2006, his Louisville team ran into the South Carolina dynasty on the Tuesday night in New York. But losing to one of the greatest NIT programs in history is a harsh placebo. The man knows what he wants. He wants an NIT title. Now, he’s back to try to get it, and he’s going to make his attempt from just up the Hudson.
Making the NIT
The first challenge to Pitino’s NIT quest is, obviously, making the field. There’s reason to believe Iona can do this with some regularity. After all, the Gaels “won” the MAAC each of the four years between 2016 and 2019. Of course, Iona didn’t really win the MAAC those years. They won the MAAC Tournament, receiving the consolation prize associated with such a feat—a trip to a lesser postseason tournament than the NIT.
Iona did, though, actually win the MAAC in four of the last ten seasons, meaning, they won the regular season title. Twice—in 2014 and 2015—that resulted in an NIT berth. With no MAAC foes looking particularly dangerous over the foreseeable future (we don’t have a Vermont/America East situation developing in MAACland), Iona already could argue to have the best shot of anyone at regularly winning MAAC titles even before accounting for the addition of Pitino, who figures to give them a boost in recruiting and can’t hurt the on-court product.
Winning the NIT
The second challenge, then, is winning the thing. This might sound self-evident (if it does, wait a minute, because you might reconsider when you read the next header), but this is probably the most difficult of the challenges. The truth is, the last time an NIT champion finished outside the top 50 in KenPom was 2009, when Penn State did it, and it’s been much more common for NIT champions to be among the thirty best teams in the country of late. Pitino can’t count on being lucky. He needs to be good. Not good enough to miss the NIT, of course, but good enough to win it once there. Somewhere around a top-40 team, but with a really poor schedule or some mind-boggling losses.
Setting aside the art of making the NIT (scheduling, bad losses, bargaining with the fates), there are legitimate questions about whether or not Iona can really be one of the forty or fifty best teams in the country. Tim Cluess had some squads close to that threshold (remember 2012?), but it wasn’t routine, and the peak faded. And we mustn’t forget—it’s not like Pitino will be guaranteed five straight victories just because he has a team good enough to meet historical precedent. Can he get to that point? Probably. Will he get to that point? Maybe. Would getting to that point translate to a title? Probably not.
Not Vacating the NIT Championship
Finally, there’s a task that’s going to be especially difficult for Rick Pitino: Holding onto the title over the few years following its capture.
With the non-zero possibility of a show-cause penalty coming down on him after everything’s sorted out with Louisville’s recent Notice of Allegations, and the near-certain possibility this program will break rules with Pitino at the helm, it’s not unreasonable to expect any and all of Iona’s wins these next few years to come with the risk of vacation.
In the event Pitino does win an NIT only to have the title stripped, though, many—including this blog—will probably still count him a champion.
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Overall, the chances of Pitino winning an NIT at Iona are slim. Not as slim as they’d be everywhere, but still not great.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention, of course, that some would argue Pitino really did win the 2014 NIT, when rumor has it he guided his son through the Florida State and SMU games from the first row behind the bench. But look—those are rumors. He wants the real thing.
That’s why he’s back here in the first place.
