Rick Pitino has a succession plan in mind when he’s ready to hang it up.
His son, Richard.
The first-year St. John’s coach was asked about the potential of his son, currently the head coach at New Mexico, landing the open DePaul job this offseason, and in typical Pitino fashion, took a detour.
“I personally want him to stay at New Mexico. I want him to stay at New Mexico until I leave St. John’s and he can take my place then,” Pitino said after the Johnnies’ 85-57 blitzing of DePaul at UBS Arena on Tuesday night.
The Hall of Fame coach then added: “The one thing I can tell you about my son, Richard: I have no say in what he does. I did when he was my assistant coach. He’s his own man. So if he wants to go to DePaul, or any place else, that’s going to be his call.”
The 41-year-old Richard is having a big year at New Mexico.
The Lobos are ranked 25th in the country and are a projected NCAA Tournament team.
New Mexico won 22 games and reached the NIT last year in Richard’s third season as its head coach.
Previously, he was the head coach at Minnesota for eight seasons and worked under his father at Louisville from 2007-09 and 2011-12.
“Most fathers will brag about their sons, but I’ll brag about the assistant coach I had,” the elder Pitino said. “Richard was responsible for one Final Four. Without him, we wouldn’t have gotten there. Richard is one of the bright minds in the game today.
“He’s a great coach, he’s a great communicator.”
Tuesday’s game marked the second of three contests at UBS Arena for St. John’s.
It was a light crowd of 6,035.
The Johnnies’ first game at the Islanders’ arena was a non-conference game against Hofstra. That drew 7,486.
“I think the bobblehead f–ked up this crowd entirely. They were protesting that bobblehead,” Pitino joked, referring to the giveaway of his likeness. “Look, Mike Cragg is a fabulous athletic director, really great. This is on me. I just misread things.
“A, I didn’t know Carnesecca [Arena] was as strong a homecourt as it is. B, I thought we would get 13,000, 14,000 people. I thought we would get a good Long Island crowd. This is a really good place. It’s a last place team [we’re facing]. It’s not that they don’t want to support us. I don’t blame the fans.”
St. John’s third and final game at UBS Arena will be against Seton Hall on Feb. 18.