St. John’s is having a dream season below Rick Pitino — and now it’s no query why his guys are taking part in so onerous.
Within the first episode of Vice TV’s “Pitino: Red Storm Rising,” viewers bought an inside look from the St. Johns locker room throughout a Pitino halftime speech.
In a December sport on the highway towards Windfall, St. John’s was trailing by 13 on the half and taking pictures simply 35 p.c from the sphere, 1-for-9 from deep and 2-for-7 from the free-throw line.
Pitino was not happy at their effort towards one of many lesser groups within the Massive East.
“Dig in and be a basketball player. Dig in! Every time you miss a shot, your game deflates,” Pitino shouted at his guys. “We don’t care about your missed shots. Play f–king defense! You guys keep blowing opportunity upon opportunity upon opportunity.”
It had its meant impact because the Purple Storm willed its solution to a 72-70 comeback victory over the Friars with a dominant second half.
“You’re like children with bad things happening. Instead of digging in and being tougher, you wilt!” Pitino mentioned.
Pitino’s son Richard, the top coach of the New Mexico males’s basketball workforce, joked on X that the speech gave him “PTSD of the time I didn’t make my bed.”
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However Pitino’s phrases weren’t nearly basketball — they usually weren’t simply evaluating his workforce’s play to whiny youngsters both.
“Where is your f–king toughness? Where have you guys been raised that you’re so weak mentally that you just f–king give up when something doesn’t go right for you?” Pitino emphatically questioned to his gamers. “Don’t what adversity is all about?
“That’s the f–king game of life, not the game of basketball. You don’t f–king get down when things go wrong, you dig in and get tougher.”
For guys who could by no means make knowledgeable basketball league, meshing basketball and life in a speech like this one is invaluable.
Pitino mentioned that people haven’t seen the half of it in the case of his locker room lectures.
“I really wasn’t that tough on them. You should’ve seen some of my Kentucky halftimes,” Pitino instructed WFAN on Tuesday morning after the clip went viral.
Some could not like Pitino’s old-school, hard-nosed fashion of teaching and management — however it’s clear that his gamers reply effectively to it as St. John’s at the moment sits at 22-4 atop the Massive East.
“Your whole life’s going to be adversity. Learn how to f–king deal with it!” Pitino mentioned.
