O'Neil: That unmistakable whiff of desperation

Danny doesn't necessarily wish that Rick Pitino were Washington's coach. But he did feel a little jealous watching him get introduced at St. John's.

Note from Christian: Danny O’Neil, with whom I co-host “Say Who, Say Pod,” wrote an interesting column on his site today about the Faustian bargain made by St. John’s in hiring Rick Pitino — with a Washington spin. He’s offered to also publish it here for On Montlake’s paid subscribers.

***

There’s a new college basketball coach coming to town.

No, not Seattle. I’m talking about the town that I live in now: Manhattan. Well, I guess that’s a borough if you want to get all technical about it.¹

St. John’s has hired Rick Pitino to be its head coach. My first reaction was to cackle a bit, which is understandable. It’s objectively funny that St. John’s fired its previous coach Mike Anderson citing — among other things — a “failure to perform your duties and responsibilities in a manner that reflected positively on St. John's University” only to turn around and hire Pitino, whose success as a coach is rivaled only by the general seediness of his time at Louisville. But after I finished chuckling, I was surprised to feel a slight pang of envy. I wished — if only for a moment — that Pitino was being introduced as Washington’s head coach. I’m not proud about this feeling. In fact, I’m not even certain I would continue to feel this way if there was even a chance that the situation would come to fruition, but after watching these past four seasons of Washington basketball, I’m absolutely freaking desperate to watch a team that is at least competent on the offensive end of the floor and I do not think this will happen so long as Mike Hopkins is coaching the Huskies.

This isn’t going to be a rant about Washington’s decision to bring Hopkins back, though. Honestly, I understand the budgetary considerations as well as the contractual realities, which Christian Caple spelled out very clearly at OnMontlake.com.