Michael Cohen
College Football and College Basketball Writer
When Rick Pitino resigned from his position as head coach of the New York Knicks on May 30, 1989, the fabled collegiate program that was about to hire him had slipped and skidded into purgatory. At the University of Kentucky, where the Wildcats captured five national championships in the preceding 40 years, the repercussions from a blockbuster NCAA scandal featuring 18 formal charges — recruiting violations, academic fraud, lack of institutional control, etc. — saddled the team with three years of probation and a two-year postseason ban, the totality of which forced embattled coach Eddie Sutton to resign. Kentucky and its first-year athletic director, C.M. Newton, needed a savior.Â
Enter Pitino.
Having already taken Boston University to the NCAA Tournament in 1983 and elevated Providence to the Final Four in 1987 — at which point he bolted to the NBA — Pitino had long since established his proof of concept as a high-level program builder with limited resources. The chance to apply his unrelenting work ethic and unbending will at Kentucky, a legitimate college basketball blue blood with arguably the most rabid fan base in the country, was too good for Pitino to pass up, even amid the stench and squalor of NCAA sanctions. He joined the Wildcats ahead of the 1989-90 campaign.
From there, Pitino transformed Kentucky into perhaps the best team of the decade with three Final Four appearances and one national title in six seasons, all while churning out nine first-round picks during that span. He averaged 30.5 wins per year in seasons when the Wildcats were eligible for the NCAA Tournament and delighted fans with a style of play rooted in speed, athleticism, toughness, and unmatched physicality.
“I don’t think there could have been another coach in the history of college basketball that could have got Kentucky from where it was when he took it over to where he got it so quickly,” said Travis Ford, a two-year starting guard for Pitino at Kentucky and the eventual head coach of four Division I programs, during an interview with FOX Sports. “And not just talking about X’s and O’s. Yes, X’s and O’s, but also how low Kentucky basketball was at the time. But people still loved it. It was still Kentucky basketball with the fans and everybody. And having to take that over and still live up to expectations, only he could do that.”
The formula for how Pitino did it — with ruthless conditioning workouts, hyper-detailed film sessions, marathon practices, and an innovative commitment to personalized player development — tested the upper limits of emotional and physical exertion for everyone on the roster in ways they’ll never forget. That so many of those players respect and revere Pitino to this day, despite the immense challenges he put them through, continues to underscore the power of his coaching elixir.
To better understand that dynamic, FOX Sports spoke with 15 of Pitino’s former players, ranging from his time as an assistant coach under Jim Boeheim at Syracuse (1976-78) through his current role at St. John’s (2023-present), along with the handful of collegiate stops he made in between: at Boston University from 1978-83, at Providence College from 1985-87, at Kentucky from 1989-97, at Louisville from 2001-17, and at Iona from 2020-23.
This is the second in a three-part series titled Postcards of Pitino. We continue with “The Glory Years,” which span Pitino’s stints at Kentucky (national title in 1996) and Louisville (national title in 2013) before his eventual dismissal from the Cardinals in 2017 amid an FBI investigation into fraud and corruption across the college basketball landscape.
Editor’s note: The following accounts were edited for length, clarity, and flow.
From: Reggie Hanson, F, Kentucky (1987-91)
Career stats: 11.6 points and 5.4 rebounds per game in 101 appearances
Years with Pitino: 2
Kentucky was on probation when Coach Pitino got there, so I was being recruited by other schools to leave. I had my first meeting with Coach Pitino, and my main concern was I’m 6-foot-7 and 180 pounds at that time. I talked to different guys in the pros that played for Coach Pitino, and they were like, ‘Hey, it’s going to be intense, but you’re going to get better.’ And so I told him my main thing was I wanted to get developed into a complete player and not just be a post player. And he said, ‘Oh, you’re not going to worry about that. The main thing you’ve got to worry about is getting in shape.’
The first meeting he had with us as a team, he said, ‘They’re predicting us to not win many games. We’ll win more games than what they’re predicting. I don’t know how many, but we’ll win more than what they’re predicting because of how hard we’re going to work. I appreciate you guys staying, but after preseason conditioning, half of you might be gone because you may not make it.’ And we were all like, ‘Wow.’ But he was brutally honest like that, like you see in the videos with St. John’s. He’s not cutting no corners with you. Either you like it, or you don’t play.
In preseason, we would have 6 a.m. workouts at the track. And if you didn’t make the expected running times, you had to do it again at 3 p.m. If you didn’t make the expected running times at 3 p.m., you had to do it at 6 a.m. the next day. So you had to keep doing it at 6 a.m. and 3 p.m. until everybody had made those times to go onto the next part of conditioning. It was brutal to the point where it gave me anxiety.
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