RICK PITINO BIOGRAPHY
UK Tradition Continues with Pitino at Helm
Rick Pitino has averaged 29.6 wins per season over the past five years at UK.
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After seven years of reconstructing a program that had been decimated by NCAA sanctions and player defections, Coach Rick Pitino has returned the University of Kentucky Wildcats to the top rung of the collegiate basketball ladder. When Pitino guided his UK squad to the 1996 NCAA Championship, it was a crowning jewel in a coaching career that has been dictated by success. The national title, along with Pitino's many other coaching accomplishments at UK, also gave Wildcats fans a strong claim to their traditional boast that Kentucky is the "Basketball Capital of the World."
Pitino now owns one NCAA title, three Final Four appearances, an 80.3 percent winning percentage at UK and three national Coach of the Year awards. He is recognized as one of the top college coaches in America. And he's only 44 years old.
His resume also includes four Southeastern Conference Tournament crowns and an SEC Tournament record of 14-1. He's led Kentucky to two league titles, winning SEC Coach of the Year honors twice.
His 14-year collegiate coaching record is 317-119 (72.7%). During the 1995-96 season, Pitino became only the ninth coach in NCAA histoty to teach the 300-win plateau in 14 seasons or less.
In NCAA Tournament play, he's been equally successful. Among active coaches, he's second in winning percentage (77.7%) for NCAA Tournament games and he's 11th in all-time tournament wins (21). But while the honors pile up, so do the offers from the professional ranks. Most recently, Pitino
spurned millions to become coach and general manager of the New Jersey Nets. Instead, he chose to "follow his heart" and remain in the Bhiegrass State as coach of the Kentucky Wildcats, a team with unparalleled Tradition.
And while he was once known for rebuilding programs, he's now proven himself as simply "a winner." His seven-year stay at Kentucky is proof. He's guided the Wildcats to two NCAA Final Fours (1993 and '96) and four trips to the Elite Eight, while achieving a 184-45 record. He has accomplished this even though the Cats were on NCAA probation his first two seasons at UK.
Prior to tesurrecting Kentucky, which had a 13-19 record the season before his arrival, Pitino had been credited with turning around the Boston Univetsity program, taking Providence College to the NCAA Final Four in his second season there and turning the NBAs New York Knicks from consistent losers to division champions in just two years.
But Pitino has done much more than make the words "champions" and "Wildcats" synonymous once again. Besides winning the school's sixth national title in 1996, Kentucky is now the winningest basketball program in NCAA history, surpassing North Carolina by three victories, 1,650-1,647. The Cats also claim the best all-time winning percentage in Division I at 76.0 percent. Since 1991, Kentucky has more victories than any other school in the country with 148, an average of 29.6 wins per season since UK came off NCAA probation.
The Wildcats also earned the title of "Most Popular Team" in college basketball, according to a Harris Poll conducted last season.
UK's popularity is a good fit with Pitino's winning reputation.
At Boston U., he was 91-51 in five seasons. At Providence, he finished 42-23 in two years. With the Knicks, he was 90-74 in two campaigns. In 16 years of coaching, he's 407-193 (67.8%). That winning percentage is even more impressive when one considers the conditions of the programs when Pitino inherited them.
At age 25, Pitino accepted his first head coaching job in 1978 at BU. The Terriers had won only 17 games over the previous two years, hut went 17-9 during Pitino's first season. He was the most successful coach in the school's history. He was twice named New England Coach of the Year and in his final season at BU, led the Terriers to their first NCAA appearance in 24 years.
Providence College was 11-20 the year before Pitino took ovet in 1985. Using the press and