There will be more than just a basketball game taking place when Rick Pitino leads St. John’s into battle with a Xavier team coached by his son, Richard, Saturday afternoon in Cincinnati.
It will mark the fifth time the father and son have squared off against each other as head coaches, with the elder Pitino holding a 3-1 advantage over his son. The rivalry was ensured of a renewal in the Big East when Richard was hired by Xavier in the spring to replace Sean Miller, who left to take over at Texas.
St. John’s (14-5, 7-1 Big East) enters Saturday’s game on a five-game winning streak while Xavier (11-8, 3-5) is playing less than 72 hours after being dealt a crushing 94-93 loss at Creighton on Wednesday night. Xavier is also honoring one of its past great players, raising the No. 52 of former guard Tu Holloway to the rafters in a halftime ceremony.
Rick Pitino beat his son twice when he was coaching Louisville, once in 2012, Richard’s first as a Division I head coach at Florida International, and once in 2014 when Richard was head coach at Minnesota.
Richard broke through in 2022, when he was coaching New Mexico and his Lobos beat his father’s Iona Gaels. Rick Pitino won the most recent meeting in 2024 when St. John’s got the better of New Mexico.
With a win, Rick Pitino will join a small group of coaches with 900 career DI coaching wins, albeit with an asterisk. According to the NCAA, Pitino has just 776 wins due to rules violations at Louisville, where he won his second national championship in 2013.
Former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski (1,202) is the all-time wins leader.
On the possibility of reaching 900 against his son, Pitino acknowledged, “I think that’s a big treat for me and the family. Either way, we know we’re going to have a difficult game against them because of their style of play. He’s doing a fabulous job, and so this is gonna be a lot of fun, great game. If we lose, I’ll leave my team in Cincinnati.”
The Red Storm are led by senior forward Zuby Ejiofor, averaging 15.8 points and 7.3 rebounds a game.
“We’re going to approach the Xavier game with the same mindset and just go out there and do our jobs and try to come out with the victory,” Ejiofor said.
Pitino’s son has his own issues to worry about. On Wednesday, Xavier led by four in the final minute and by one after a missed free throw by Creighton’s Austin Swartz with 4.3 seconds left. But Swartz grabbed the loose-ball rebound and banked in the game-winner as time expired for a 94-93 win.
“It’s like any other game. I know there’s a storyline of my dad, this and that,” Richard Pitino said. “For me, it’s a home game against one of the best teams in the country. I’ve got to do my very best to not make it about that and make it solely on trying to put my guys in a position to beat a really good team.”
Tre Carroll leads Xavier, averaging 17.3 points and 5.7 rebounds a game.
–Field Level Media
