{"id":685477,"date":"2026-03-27T12:16:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T12:16:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/685477\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T12:16:19","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T12:16:19","slug":"the-twists-that-brought-rick-pitino-st-johns-together-for-this-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/685477\/","title":{"rendered":"The twists that brought Rick Pitino, St. John\u2019s together for this moment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How did we get here?<\/p>\n<p>On Friday night, St. John\u2019s will make <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/26\/sports\/the-dichotomy-between-st-johns-underdog-mentality-and-bigger-goals-at-stake\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">its first appearance in the Sweet 16 in 27 years<\/a>, only 40 minutes from securing <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/26\/sports\/how-st-johns-measures-up-to-no-1-duke-in-sweet-16-showdown\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">one of the biggest victories<\/a> in program history against <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/25\/sports\/dukes-college-basketball-villainy-is-unrivaled-and-unabating\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">forever-loathed No. 1 Duke<\/a>, in position to move one win from its first Final Four since 1985.<\/p>\n<p>It is because Rick Pitino <a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/03\/24\/sports\/rick-pitino-is-new-yorks-coach-delivering-for-st-johns\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">came to Queens<\/a>. It is because of the most unique road any coach has ever traveled.<\/p>\n<p>Think of everything that had to happen for Pitino to end up at St. John\u2019s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"How did we get here? On Friday night, St. John\u2019s will make its first appearance in the Sweet&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":685478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,27432,2076,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,2229,30692,62,2225,1378,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-685477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-beyond-the-back-page","10":"tag-college-basketball","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-newyork","14":"tag-newyorkcity","15":"tag-ny","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-post-sports-newsletters","18":"tag-rick-pitino","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-sports-plus","21":"tag-st-johns-red-storm","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-united-states-of-america","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","26":"tag-us","27":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116301095796349678","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}