Red Storm head basketball coach Rick Pitino seemed to be attempting to quiet the MSG crowd chanting “Who’s your daddy?” at Lobos head coach, and Rick’s son, Richard Pitino, during St. John’s 85-71 win on November 17.
Pitino denied that he disliked the chants during the postgame press conference per The New York Post’s Zach Braziller.
“Rick Pitino said he was not upset with the ‘Who’s your daddy’ chants,” Braziller tweeted.
Pitino not disowning the chants is an objectively funnier narrative than him not liking a rabid Manhattan crowd cheering him on in a friendly and light-hearted way. It’s quite the juxtaposition with the prevailing storyline in the days following a St. John’s win over Wagner: his Red Storm players’ parents being too “over the top.”
“For years, coaches had been making millions and players had gotten nothing. Now, they’re being paid a great deal of money,” Pitino said on the November 14 episode of WFAN’s “Boomer and Gio” (h/t The New York Post). “What I will say what I like about it, I’d say my players give about 80 percent of the NIL to their parents to help them out and their families. That’s a great thing.
“The parents are great parents. They’re very interested, they’re just a little over the top. One of my players on the team hasn’t been rebounding well, and his parents said ‘You gotta get your numbers [up]. You gotta get those rebounds up.’ These kids have enough pressure with social media. They don’t need that. It is a little over the top. They are wonderful parents, they’re loving parents, they’re great, but they’re just a little too involved. I wish they would just be less involved in their lives in terms of when it comes to performance. Leave that up to the coaches.”
Red Storm head basketball coach Rick Pitino was a happy father after St. John’s beat New Mexico
Ultimately, Pitino sounds like a happy father following St. John’s fourth win of the 2024-25 season in the “Pitino Bowl.”
“It was a great win with a great crowd and a great day,” Pitino said to reporters.
St. John’s faces Baylor, Georgia, Harvard, and Kansas State next in a true prove-it stretch for the Red Storm.
