The final buzzer of Iona’s season was the starting gun for Rick Pitino.
Just five days after Iona’s NCAA Tournament loss to eventual national champion Connecticut in Albany, St. John’s convened the media at Madison Square Garden to announce Pitino as its new head coach.
At the glitzy and full-of-promise press conference, Pitino promised die-hard St. John’s fans that he would restore winning to the dormant program. With this tall order, there was no time to settle in.
Later that afternoon, the new Red Storm coach held his first staff meeting at Wolfgang’s Steakhouse near the Garden. There, he warned them, the work was just beginning. At the time, Pitino said they would need to bring in as many as eight new players, which turned out to be on the light side. It would become 11.
He laid out qualities St. John’s needed to look for in recruits: high-character, athleticism and versatility. But most of all, shooting. Shooting, shooting and more shooting.
“If they can’t shoot,” he told the staff, “I don’t want them.”
And so began 56 days of, as Pitino put it, “chaos.” Nonstop phone calls. One visit stacked onto the next. Twelve recruiting trips to the Garden. Early mornings and late nights. It was so busy Pitino didn’t golf once at Winged Foot in that span — and he owns a house on the famed course.
In less than two months, Pitino built a roster almost from scratch, excluding the return of standout center Joel Soriano. An 11-man recruiting class which experts and rival coaches believe is an NCAA Tournament team on paper and has the potential to snap the Johnnies’ drought without a tournament win that stretches back to 2000. A 10-man transfer class — a group led by Ivy League Player of the Year and the nation’s No. 2 scorer Jordan Dingle (Penn), valuable UConn reserve and three-year Virginia Tech starter Nahiem Alleyene, Iona point guard Daniss Jenkins and talented wings Glenn Taylor Jr. and RJ Luis of Oregon State and Massachusetts, respectively — is ranked fourth nationally by 247Sports.com.
“Stressful and exciting at the same time,” was how assistant coach Van Macon, the lone holdover from the Mike Anderson regime, described it. “Stressful because you’re trying to fill out a roster. It’s exciting because we were involved with some really, really good players and we got some of them.”
Some days, Pitino would start at 5 a.m. with a workout and wouldn’t go to bed until 1 a.m.. There would be up to five conference calls with the staff on the same day. At times they would meet at Club Macanudo, a cigar bar in midtown Manhattan near Pitino’s apartment, as late as midnight after visits.
“The whole thing was chaos,” he recalled. “We’re just racking our brains. What do you think? Where do we stand? Talking to everybody we could talk to because you don’t know where you stand.
“I always say pressure is a good thing, pressure helps you work your ass off. Helps you get up early, stay up late, be innovative and get creative. The pressure on us was enormous.”
It started slowly, a few misses on significant players they pursued. Walter Clayton Jr., Pitino’s best player at Iona and the MAAC Player of the Year, picked Florida over St. John’s. Brooklyn native Chris Ledlum, a standout forward from Harvard, chose Tennessee. Another New Yorker, Notre Dame transfer Cormac Ryan, opted for North Carolina. Key contributors to last year’s team, in particular AJ Storr and Posh Alexander, entered the transfer portal after being offered the opportunity to stay.
There was some disappointment and angst, with fans wondering what was happening the first few weeks. But internally, Pitino and two of his assistants said there wasn’t any doubt. Clayton opting to go home wasn’t a shock. Neither was Ryan picking Chapel Hill over Queens. Ledlum came as somewhat of a surprise. When the staff got word of his decision, Pitino didn’t flinch.
“OK, who’s next? Who do we have to get?” associate head coach Steve Masiello recalled him saying. “What’s our next priority? Who do we have coming in, who do we have to go see?”
The momentum turned during a hectic five-day span when St. John’s hosted seven different recruits for visits, five of whom they landed. There was Brady Dunlap, a top-150 high school recruit and one-time Notre Dame signee. A pair of highly regarded transfer wings, Luis and Taylor. Niagara high-scoring guard Noah Thomasson, high school wing Spencer Mahoney and Iona duo Quinn Slazinski (who had already committed) and Sadiku Ibine Ayo.
Each assistant was assigned to a different player and his family, while Pitino would bounce among them. The toughest part was making sure each player felt valued. Sometimes recruits would have meals together with their families and the staff. There wasn’t enough time to spread out the visits.
Dunlap, an elite-shooting wing, was also considering North Carolina, Villanova, Nebraska and Penn State. After his visit alongside Luis, he was set on St. John’s. His father Jeff, a longtime Division I assistant coach, had always felt Pitino was the best coach in college basketball, which got the Johnnies in the picture. His son said he saw what the hype was about during the trip.
Pitino broke down Dunlap’s game in minute detail and compared him to past players he developed with a similar skill set — like 2013 Final Four Most Outstanding Player Luke Hancock. Pitino showed Dunlap exactly how he would be used. Then, Pitino put him through an intense workout unlike any he had on a recruiting visit.
“It was tiring, it was hard, I was gutting through it,” Dunlap recalled.
Afterward, Masiello approached the sweat-drenched Dunlap.
“If you did this workout five times a week with Coach Pitino, how good would you be?” Masiello asked him.
“I’m going to develop into a pretty damn good player,” Dunlap thought to himself. “That kind of resonated and stuck with me through the next week.”
Later — in the span of seven days from May 1-8 — St. John’s landed Taylor, Dunlap, Luis and Ayo, bolstering the roster. All four had visited the school between April 22-26, along with Slazinski.
One common factor with Taylor, Dunlap and Luis is that they aren’t from New York City. It was new to them. The Garden was fresh. The bright lights of Manhattan were different. All talked about how much playing in a venue like MSG in the big city was a draw to them. Pitino used that in St. John’s favor. He took them to upscale restaurants. He told them to order anything on the menu. Dunlap recalled eating the first $100 steak of his young life.
“The further you get away from New York City, the more appealing it is to a recruit,” Pitino said. “New York is the greatest city in the world. Who doesn’t know that? The New York high school kid because he’s thinking of going away to school.”
Added Dunlap, a Newhall, Calif., native: “It’s cool to be around the energy of New York City. Even the crazy drivers on the street and everyone going in different directions, I liked that. Everybody has a purpose.”
Then came April 30, a day that — other than the hiring of Pitino — may be remembered as the most important for next season. It was the day Dingle visited St. John’s unofficially, putting into motion the most significant addition of the Pitino era.
Around the same time, St. John’s had started to realize it was in an uphill battle for former Duke commit Mackenzie Mgbako, a McDonald’s All-American from Roselle (N.J.) Catholic who ultimately signed with Indiana.
“There was definitely concern they hadn’t gotten that big fish,” a source familiar with the staff’s thinking said.
On April 28, Dingle had entered the transfer portal while announcing his intentions to test the NBA draft waters. High-major schools from every power conference were interested in landing him. Oregon, UCLA, Arkansas and Texas were among those after the nation’s second-leading scorer a year ago from Valley Stream, N.Y.
But two factors were working in St. John’s favor: location and Pitino.
Dingle liked the idea of playing on a big stage close to home while playing for a coach who could raise his professional stock. Pitino has a strong relationship with Dingle’s father, Dana, the director of the New York Lightning AAU program, which sent two players to Pitino at Iona. During the visit to St. John’s, Pitino sold Dingle and his parents on his vision for him.
“You’re going to be the cornerstone of what we’re building,” Pitino told Dingle.
St. John’s would put the ball in his hands and showcase him. Pitino also laid out the areas Dingle still needs to hone in order to get drafted in a year — from improving his assist-to-turnover ratio to making others around him better. Pitino illustrated his player development history, what he did with former stars Donovan Mitchell and Terry Rozier at Louisville, and pointed to the numbers his two guards, Jenkins and Clayton, put up this past season at Iona.
“I showed him metric-wise how he can get better,” Pitino said.
The quickest recruitment, spanning a week in mid-April, was the pursuit of Alleyne, a 6-foot-4 sharpshooting guard who helped UConn win a national championship. After entering the portal, he heard from a number of schools — such as Indiana, South Carolina, Texas A&M and Georgia. St. John’s was quickly identified as the preferred choice. A Buford, Ga., native, Alleyne had a lot of family in the area, relatives in Queens and Brooklyn. His father, Daryl, grew up in New York City.
There was already a strong relationship with Taliek Brown, Pitino’s director of player personnel who starred at Connecticut and grew up with family friend Cory Underwood. And Alleyne was offered a major role, something he didn’t have at UConn. Masiello, also close to Underwood, emphasized that when they spoke. Alleyne will have the green light.
“We want you to be over-aggressive,” he told Alleyne, who played through scar tissue in his right eye that impacted his vision last season and will get it operated on in the coming weeks.
The southpaw committed to St. John’s without visiting the school, or anywhere else. He was that certain of the fit.
The final addition to Pitino’s first season at St. John’s was the one that excited him the most — and not because it meant the marathon recruiting period was over. Zuby Ejiofor, a former top-50 recruit and Kansas transfer who played limited minutes in his one season as a Jayhawk, impressed him that much.
When St. John’s brought in the Nigerian-born 6-9, 240-pound Ejiofor for a visit, the thought was he would be Soriano’s backup. But during his workout, Ejiofor showcased an ability that surprised even Pitino. He could shoot from the outside to match his physical prowess in the paint. He could play power forward. Landing him filled two needs, at power forward and a backup center.
“Holy s–t, can this kid play,” Pitino said to himself.
After the workout, Pitino approached Ejiofor and his family:
“I’ve got to have you. I’m not letting you leave this visit [without committing],” he told them.
They laughed. Pitino emphasized to them that Ejiofor could play the 4, and would for him.
“I’ve been trying to tell people that,” the recruit’s host father, Andy Philachack, responded.
When the visit was over, and Ejiofor had given a verbal commitment, Pitino was still nervous. He kept calling and texting Masiello, asking for the paperwork even though the player was still on a plane headed back home.
“I know when he gets anxious like that, it’s a sign of excitement,” Masiello joked.
Throughout the whirlwind two months, Name, Image & Likeness (NIL) remained the elephant in the room — or, actually, not in the room as Pitino tells it. Under NCAA rules and New York State law, coaches aren’t allowed to use NIL to persuade players to attend their school or use it as a recruiting incentive. Pitino said he doesn’t specifically discuss it with any recruits.
However, the players are made aware of different St. John’s collectives, which will help them profit once they arrive on campus. A source connected to one recruit said he spoke to one member of one of the collectives about potential opportunities, though an exact dollar figure wasn’t directly addressed.
Vin Ochani, the co-founder of Storm Marketing, said that since Pitino’s hiring, more businesses have expressed a desire to get involved, and the organization plans to hold several events this summer to promote players on the team. One will be an autograph session with corporate sponsors as excitement builds for the new season.
Looking forward to his first year at the helm of St. John’s, Pitino declined to put weighty expectations on the group he has brought in. It’s too early. There is too much that is unknown. He has to see them practice together. He has to see if they click, if the film and scouting reports the staff received are accurate. How the different personalities mesh and take to his demanding style of coaching.
He wouldn’t say if this should be an NCAA Tournament team next year, despite the obvious expectations. But he is happy — with the 11 new players, a mix of veterans and younger guys, shooters and slashers. He thinks he has a top-three center in the Big East in Soriano and top-three guard in Dingle. He is extremely high on Luis and Ejiofor. He knows what he’s getting in his Iona players.
“I think it’s a much better recruiting class than people even know because they all can shoot,” Pitino said. “Any time you have players that can shoot, you can make them a better defensive player. You can get them to play hard. You can get them to pass correctly. You can work on the fundamentals — if they can shoot. Changing people’s shot is very difficult.”
He added: “All these guys can play. I’m really happy with the talent. I know the potential.”
Later this month, the team will come together for the first time. Then, his work will really begin. Pitino and his staff are proud of the work they did, but in time, they will know how good of a job they did. For now, there is the excitement of what could be, a strong non-conference schedule and more games at the Garden than St. John’s has played in several seasons.
“I think it was very difficult, very time consuming, But we accomplished what we set out to do, and ultimately that’s what you want,” Pitino said. “We got the players we wanted to get. More than anything, it was gratifying. No one knows how good these players are, whether we killed it or it’s just good, it’s just a B, C-plus. No one knows.”
