Copyright Hartford Courant
NEW YORK — Like prize fighters entering the famous arena, candidates entering the debate hall, Rick Pitino and Dan Hurley crossed paths at Madison Square Garden, sizing one another up for the next go-round. “My Dad’s been coaching so many years,” said Richard Pitino, Rick’s son and the new Xavier coach. “He likes Dan Hurley, I was just sitting there talking to him and Dan and we were laughing. He’s very competitive, and whoever he plays he’s going to want to beat him, but he has great relationships with all the coaches.” UConn men’s basketball voted No. 2 in Big East preseason poll, lands four on all-league teams This was Big East Media Day, what serves as the weigh-in for the season, and St. John’s and UConn were the main event on the men’s side, the league’s top-ranked heavyweights. The Huskies, with three first-team all-conference picks, Alex Karaban, Solo Ball and Tarris Reed Jr., and the conference’s top-regarded freshman, Braylon Mullins, were nonetheless picked second by Big East coaches. The Red Storm, with the player of the year, were picked No.1. In the AP preseason poll, it was UConn fourth, St. John’s fifth. “I think it’s great for college basketball to have rivalries, to have programs that are both legitimately top-five, top-10 caliber,” Hurley said. “That’s the only way you can do a rivalry. You can’t do a rivalry if one team is the top of the sport and has won six national championships since 1999 and other programs haven’t had any level of success like that. It’s pretty hard to have a rivalry like that. “So the fact Coach (Pitino) has his program positioned the way they played last year, the way they look in the preseason, makes it exciting, makes it great for the Big East.” That was a Jersey guy’s way of saying, “Uh, just so you know….” regarding UConn’s position of dominance. Pitino, still slick in his 70s, had his own ways of messaging. “I don’t think of Connecticut as any more of a rivalry than Villanova or Providence or Marquette or Creighton,” Pitino said. “I think their fan base makes them very special, they travel bigger than anybody else. We have great respect for them. We’ve had great games with them. They’re big game for us, but nothing bigger than Providence, Villanova or any of the others.” So maybe Dan Hurley and Rick Pitino do not dislike each other. It is safe to say they particularly detest losing to each other. Two college basketball coaches, both as iconic, as much larger than life as one can be in their line of work, one in the Hall of Fame, the other will eventually join him. When Hurley and Pitino square off, Feb. 6 at The Garden, Feb. 25 at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford, it will be appointment viewing. The conference’s regular-season title will be at stake, position for March Madness will be decided. Pitino was talking about the strength of the Big East, he senses several teams are better. The league, as always, has more than its share of nationally known coaches. But as the season draws close, the league looks top heavy, with these two heavyweights at the top, and when they meet it will be for all the chips in the pot. It wasn’t a coach-against-coach rivalry, at least not on this October Tuesday, unless they were competing so see who’d have the bigger media scrum (winner, Hurley). But a lot transpires between here and February. UConn women’s basketball star Sarah Strong named preseason AP All-American “That’s a fan-public thing,” Hurley said. “Unless there is actual animosity, where some stuff went on in recruiting or there’s bad blood. There just may be things about each other that piss you off, or there was something said in the media that you took the wrong way, or they took the wrong way, or you beat them a couple of times in a row, or they beat you a couple of times in a row, and then things have a chance of festering. “But the thing with the Big East coaches, we absolutely are trying to kill each other, but because of the history of the league and the types of men that coached before us, there’s also a respect level we have for each other. There’s certainly a nastiness when we go to play St. John’s, but it’s not disrespectful.” When the Jim Calhouns, John Thompsons, Rollie Massiminos, Jim Boeheims, Lou Carneseccas were staging almost nightly knock-down, drag-outs in the original Big East. it was the stuff of legends, of documentaries that still strain to do that era justice. In 2025, this is as close as we get to that: Pitino vs. Hurley. For intensity and drama, it has yet to leave us wanting. The way this has gone recently, UConn defeated Pitino’s Iona team in the 2023 NCAA Tournament and went on to win its first championship under Hurley. The next season, Pitino moved to St. John’s, a proud program that had fallen on hard times, and as he did at Providence in the 1980s, Kentucky and Louisville later on, he breathed new life into it. Soon, the Johnnies were darlings of The Garden again. However, UConn beat St. John’s three times, taking the Big East regular-season and tournament titles and, as it turned out, knocking them off the NCAA bubble. Last season, as the Huskies went for a three-peat, St. John’s beat them twice decisively, winning the Big East. UConn in the NBA: Eight former Huskies make opening day rosters This new season finds Pitino entrenched, with machinery to bring in tournament worthy talent year over year. Preseason Big East Player of the Year Zuby Ejiofor is on his side. Hurley, believing he has become a better coach from the difficult 2024-25 season, his roster restocked, can reassert UConn’s dominance. Those are the storylines. “We know the excitement around the matchup,” UConn’s Alex Karaban said. “We can’t wait.”
