Rick Pitino's improbable path back to college basketball's spotlight

Rick Pitino, 72, has now taken his record sixth different program to the NCAA Tournament. And the Johnnies are a legitimate threat to win it all.

When the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament begins Thursday, one of its most unexpected national title contenders will be led by a coach whose return to prominence once might have felt inconceivable.

Eight years after scandals ended Rick Pitino’s tenure at one of the country’s most successful programs and led him to find work halfway around the world, the 72-year-old has a chance to stand atop the college game again thanks to No. 2 seed St. John’s (30-4).

It is the record sixth college that has made the tournament under Pitino, who had already made history as the first to win a national championship at two schools and advance to a Final Four with three.

Five decades into his career, at a time when many of Pitino’s coaching contemporaries have long since retired, Pitino did the opposite. He not only wanted to get back to the college game, he was willing to take a circuitous route to get there. And despite returning to a college system that has undergone seismic changes — from allowing players to profit off their name, image and likeness, to hopping between schools without penalty via the transfer portal — Pitino has thrived.

“I really don’t believe in the word ‘redemption’ because those who judge you really don’t know the facts,” Pitino said Monday on ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show. “They really don’t know either way, innocent or guilty. They don’t know it.”