Pitting family vs. family: UNM coach Pitino faces father in marquee game

Dec. 18—ALBUQUERQUE — The ties that bind will be put to the test Sunday in The Pit.

Actually, no they won't.

The family rivalry some might hope to see when Naismith Hall of Fame coach Rick Pitino leads visiting Iona into The Pit to face son Richard Pitino and New Mexico simply doesn't exist. The Sunday matinee, the elder Pitino said, has the entire family rooting for the Lobos.

That includes his wife and other kids, particularly his grandchildren.

"We are all devout fans of New Mexico," Rick Pitino said prior to a team practice on Saturday in University Arena. "Even when you've got to play, obviously with the time change, we're all up, keeping each other up looking at the score."

That included a recent game against San Francisco, which tipped off at 11:40 p.m. Eastern. It had the entire family watching online and sending text messages to one another into the early morning hours.

For the third time in the family's history, father and son will go head to head on the same court. Richard's Lobos are off to a 10-0 start and garnering national attention not seen in these parts in nearly a decade; Rick's Gaels are 7-2 and on their way to Hawaii next week to play in the Diamond Head Classic.

Sunday's game tips off at 4:30 and will be aired nationally on FS1. Both coaches admit it's a made-for-TV event that garners interest simply because of the family surname. What it really is is a chance for the entire family to gather for a day or two in Albuquerque for a quick Christmas get together.

The Lobos will return the favor next December when they travel to New Rochelle, N.Y., to face Iona on the road.

"I tried to tell my dad that what we should do is have everybody root for the Lobos at The Pit and everybody root for Iona in New York," Richard Pitino said earlier this week.

Sunday's game is expected to draw a near-capacity crowd, one of the biggest for a Lobos home game in years. As of Saturday night, approximately 13,900 tickets had been sold. The Lobos haven't drawn a crowd of at least 14,000 for a non-New Mexico State game since March 1, 2016, against San Diego State.

"My guys, sometimes they play in front of crowds where if you shot a cannon off it wouldn't hit anybody," Rick Pitino said.

Richard was the head coach at Boston University when Richard was born 40 years ago. Right around the time Richard was learning to walk, his dad was an assistant coach with the New York Knicks. By time he reached grade school, his dad was taking Providence to the Final Four. In elementary school, he was back in Madison Square Garden with his dad as the Knicks' head coach, and during the '90s he watched more games than he can count at Rupp Arena as his dad was coaching Kentucky.

While his dad often begins most stories with a first-person account of how it impacted him, Richard Pitino is personable and humble, often deflecting attention away from himself while heaping praise on others. In many ways, he's the opposite of his father, far less demonstrative on the sidelines and (in dad's words) has a more sarcastic sense of humor.

"I actually think he's going to be better than me because when I was his age — let's even go a little younger — I invented the game of basketball," Rick Pitino said. "I didn't have his humility, and humility is the key to greatness in all walks of life. If you're a humble hard worker, you're going to make it, and you're going to make it big. Richard's been humble from Day One."

In his younger days, Rick Pitino said he wasn't good enough to do what his son is doing now. While Rick was busy spending countless hours on the road building a career that has produced 814 wins at five different schools, Richard watched and learned, absorbing the good and the bad while making his own decisions on how to do things.

"He's better than me at the same stage, and I'm very proud of that," Rick Pitino said said. "I hope he goes to the Final Four, and I hope it's at New Mexico. I think this is a special place."

Richard Pitino has avoided the controversies and scandals that have rocked his dad's career at certain times. He has also forged his own path, resurrecting his reputation with the Lobos after getting fired from Minnesota.

One of his first goals was to bring the fans back and stoke the fires of a state that has been largely apathetic toward Lobos hoops since the heyday of the Steve Alford era nearly a decade ago. He has managed to do at least part of that with an unexpected hot start, one that has gotten national buzz and just so happens to coincide with the arrival of his more-famous father.

"I understand it's a storyline, but it's got nothing to do with the game," Richard said. "Now, I scheduled this because I wanted the exposure for our program as we rebuild it; obviously we've got a nationally televised game. ... The father-son thing has nothing to do with my approach to the game at all."

NOTES

Pops rules: There have been 20 head-to-head meetings between teams coached by a father and son. The dad has won 19 of them, the lone exception coming in 1958 when Ed Diddle Jr. coached Middle Tennessee to an 81-75 win over E.A. Diddle and Western Kentucky.

Legends among us: Rick Pitino will become the first Naismith Hall of Famer to coach three different teams in The Pit. He was here with Boston in 1980 and again with Louisville in the 2005 NCAA Tournament regional that sent the Cardinals to the Final Four.

He is the 18th Hall of Fame coach to coach a game in The Pit.

And then there were five: The number of remaining unbeaten teams fell to five after UNLV and No. 2 Virginia both lost Saturday.

Entering Sunday's games, only the Lobos (10-0), top-ranked Purdue (11-0), No. 3 UConn (12-0), No. 17 Mississippi State (11-0) and unranked Utah State (9-0) still had a goose egg in the loss column.

Planes, trains & automobiles: It took Iona 22 hours to get from New York to Albuquerque. The team was supposed to arrive Friday but didn't land in New Mexico until noon Saturday. Pitino said a delay getting out of LaGuardia Airport made the Gaels miss their connecting flight in Dallas. The airline said they could possibly get the team to Albuquerque on a 9 p.m. Saturday flight before alternative plans were made.

Toss in a little 5,200-foot altitude to go with some jet lag, and the Gaels were off to a tough start once they got onto The Pit floor Saturday night.