St. John’s HC Rick Pitino Comments on West Virginia Basketball

St. John’s HC Rick Pitino made a couple of comments on Friday night about West Virginia’s basketball team. Pitino made his first trip back to Morgantown since 2012 when he coached at Louisville. St. John’s had multiple opportunities to open the flood gates in the second half but West Virginia stuck around as much as they could. The Red Storm ended up finishing the game in the final minutes, 79-73.

“I’ve been coaching for 40-something years. Very rarely do I see a road game where you pull away like that. I mean [WVU] played Virginia to the wire on a neutral court. This is a tough place to play,” Pitino said.

WVU now moves to an overall record of 3-4 with interim HC Josh Eilert. Eilert and his coaching staff have had a long six months since the resignation of Bob Huggins. Pitino recognizes that and gave West Virginia credit for their performance on Friday.

“West Virginia is playing very hard with a lot of adversity. They gave us all we could handle,” Pitino said.

St. John’s earned their fifth victory of the season as they gave the Big East their only Friday win over the Big 12. Heading into the weekend, the Big East and Big 12 are tied at 3-3 in the annual series.