Coaching Matters
Congratulations to the Iona Mens Basketball team, for winning their way into March Madness with a win in the MAAC finals, defeating Fairfeild by a score of 60-51. Iona was ranked #9 in the MAAC tournament and nobody expected the Gaels to move onto post season play.
Last year, Iona hired legendary college basketball coach Rick Pitino, who was coaching in Greece at the time after a few personal troubles got him “blackballed” (his words) from being hired by other big time college basketball programs. Pitino had brought Providence, Kentucky and Louisville to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament.
When he took the job at Iona, he called it his last stop as a coach, and promised to rebuild the program in his style by recruiting talent in the years to come. This year was a learning process and a chance to get to know the top high school players in the country and try to get one or two to come to Iona next year.
Pitino, like every college coach, also had to deal with the COVID season of sports. Several Iona hoops players tested positive and for one stretch of the season, the teams went more than two months without playing a game, including a 50 day stretch and the last 16 days of the regular season before the MAAC tournament.
The Gaels still ended the reason with a respectable 12-5 record and got hot at the right time, as Pitino coached teams always seem to do, winning four MAAC tournament games in five days.
Only three Iona players returned to join Coach Pitino, making it even more unlikely that this year’s squad would have any success. Pitino preached defense to his team, and it paid off, with wins over Niagra and Sienna in the MAAC tournament before beating an equally challenged Fairfield team.
This year’s Iona mens basketball team should show anyone who ever doubted it-that Coaching matters, and can easily add several wins to any sporting teams final record. And if you have a special coach, a Hall of Fame Coach like Rick Pitino at the helm, then your team can be special, even if it doesn’t have extrordinary players.
Now that Pitino gets Iona into March Madness, they will probably go up against a top ranked team and lose in the first round. But even if that happens, many high school seniors will be watching, and watching Rick Pitino on the sidelines. Perhaps they will consider Iona as their future school and future basketball teams.
And now Westchester has a team to root for in March Madness. Thanks Coach.
Let’s give Iona’s old coach Tim Cluess some credit. He got Iona to the last four NCAA tournaments, not an easy task. With this year’s Iona entry in the dance, Pitino becomes only the third coach in NCAA history to bring five different schools to the NCAA tournament. (Boston University was the fifth school that I had to look up)
And if Iona wins a game, It’s Cindarella Baby, as Dick Vitale likes to say! Or its Hoosiers. I can’t wait.
