Rick Pitino

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Rick Pitino (born September 18, 1952 in New York City) is the head basketball coach at the University of Louisville. He has coached on the professional level, for the New York Knicks and Boston Celtics with mixed success but coached the University of Kentucky to a 1996 NCAA national title that earned him respect as a coach and motivator. He is the only person in NCAA history to coach three different teams to the Final Four.

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Early years

Pitino, a native of New York City, was captain of the St. Dominic High School basketball team in Oyster Bay, Long Island. He enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1970, where he joined the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity. He was a standout guard for the Minutemen's basketball team. His 329 career assists rank eighth all-time at UMass and his 168 assists as a senior is the sixth-best single season total ever there. Pitino was a freshman at the same time NBA legend Julius Erving spent his junior (and final) year at UMass. Pitino earned his degree from UMass in 1974. He was an inductee into the UMass Hall of Fame.

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Collegiate coaching

He is currently head coach at the University of Louisville. Previous coaching assignments include Boston University, Providence College, and the University of Kentucky, all part of the NCAA. As a collegiate head coach Pitino has compiled a 449-159 record, a .738 winning percentage that is ranked eighth among active coaches and 27th all-time among all collegiate basketball coaches entering the 2005-06 season. Pitino coached both the New York Knicks and Boston Celtics of the NBA. Pitino started his coaching career as a graduate assistant at the University of Hawaii in 1974, and became a full-time assistant in 1975 and 1976.

His Providence team advanced as far as the Final Four in the 1987 NCAA Tournament. That team was lead by point guard Billy Donovan, now head coach at Florida. Pitino is considered by many to be one of the first coaches to promote fully taking advantage of the 3-point shot, first adopted by the NCAA in 1987. In 1989, he left for Kentucky, which was then reeling from a major recruiting scandal. He led his Kentucky team to the Final Four in the 1993 NCAA Tournament and won a national title in the 1996 NCAA Tournament. The following year, Pitino's Kentucky team would lose to the Arizona in overtime in the NCAA finals of the 1997 NCAA Tournament. Pitino's fast paced teams at Kentucky were favorites of the school's hard-to-please fans. His signature defensive style is a full-court pressure defense.

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Professional coaching

As dynamic a coach as Pitino has been at the college level, his NBA coaching experience often demonstrated a deep frustration with the more challenging demands of the league's fans, especially in Boston where he amassed a 102-146 record. After being beaten by the Toronto Raptors on March 1, 2000 on a buzzer-beater by Vince Carter, Pitino's frustration reached critical mass as he addressed the press in an infamous tirade that has since become an important part of sports culture. Referring to the high expectations of Boston Celtics fans and media, Pitino challenged each to forget past successes in an almost embarrassing exchange of brutal honesty. "Larry Bird is not walking through that door, fans. Kevin McHale is not walking through that door, and Robert Parish is not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through that door, they're going to be gray and old. What we are is young, exciting, hard-working, and we're going to improve. People don't realize that, and as soon as they realize those three guys are not coming through that door, the better this town will be for all of us because there are young guys in that (locker) room playing their asses off." He continued, "I wish we had $90 million under the salary cap. I wish we could buy the world. We can't; the only thing we can do is work hard, and all the negativity that's in this town sucks. I've been around when Jim Rice was booed. I've been around when (Carl) Yastrzemski was booed. And it stinks. It makes the greatest town, greatest city in the world, lousy. The only thing that will turn this around is being upbeat and positive like we are in that locker room... and if you think I'm going to succumb to negativity, you're wrong. You've got the wrong guy leading this team." Pitino's tongue-lashing instantly became a cornerstone of Boston Celtics lore, and has served as a metaphor for other sports teams and their failures to relive past successes. Pitino himself reprised the speech in a tongue-in-cheek manner at University of Louisville in November 2005, challenging his freshmen players to play as tough as past seniors and drawing laughter from sportswriters in a post-game press conference.

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Author and accomplishments

Pitino is the author of a motivational self-help book (and audio recording) named Success is a Choice. He published an autobiography in 1988 entitled Born to Coach describing his life up until his time with the Knicks.

In 2005, Pitino's University of Louisville team posted a tie for the most single season wins in school history (33) while he became the first coach in NCAA history to lead three separate schools (Providence College, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Louisville) to the Final Four.

Pitino's 0.756 winning percentage in 41 NCAA Tournament games is third best among active coaches.

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External links

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