The Long-Awaited Showdown Between Rick Pitino and Bill Self Has Finally Arrived

SAN DIEGO — Rick Pitino has coached 1,231 college basketball games. Bill Self has coached 1,126. Just one of those games has been against each other.

That was in November 2021, and it wasn’t a fair fight. Pitino was at mid-major Iona, still reinventing himself for about the fourth time in his highly dramatic, ever-evolving career. Self was on his way to winning the national championship at Kansas a few months later. The Jayhawks won by 13.

Finally, the two Hall of Famers meet with something substantial on the line: a berth in the NCAA men’s tournament Sweet 16.

Pitino’s St. John’s Red Storm (29–6) are the No. 5 seed in the East region. Self’s Jayhawks (24–10) are the No. 4 seed. The winner moves on to potentially present a significant problem for top seed Duke next week in Washington, D.C.

This meeting comes at an interesting career moment for both men. Pitino is a decade older than Self but might be in better health; he’s 73 and coaching largely the same way he did at 43, when he won his first national championship. Self, 63, has had several heart-related issues in recent years, missing games in 2023, ’25 and in January.

Certainly, both men are in the latter stages of their careers and trying to add another March Madness run to their résumés while they can. They each have two national titles, although Pitino’s second—at Louisville in 2013—was vacated by the NCAA for major violations. Pitino has been to seven Final Fours at three different schools, Self to three at Kansas.

They both were embroiled in the FBI investigation of corruption in college basketball that erupted in 2017, but came out of it in vastly different places. Louisville, suffering from Pitino scandal fatigue after one in his personal life and the strippers-and-escorts-in-the-basketball-dorm fiasco that led to vacating the ’13 title, quickly fired him. Kansas doubled down in defense of Self, accepting relatively light NCAA sanctions of the coach and even giving him a “lifetime” contract in 2021.

Those divergent administrative decisions led to different post-scandal paths. Pitino went into coaching exile, spending two seasons coaching pro ball in Greece before getting his reentry job at Iona and then moving to St. John’s after three seasons. Self kept right on rolling at Kansas.

Pitino has had the far more peripatetic coaching journey, leading six colleges (Boston U., Providence, Kentucky, Louisville, Iona and St. John’s) and two NBA franchises (the Knicks and Celtics). Self has had four head coaching jobs: Oral Roberts, Tulsa, Illinois and Kansas. When he reached the Cadillac program in Lawrence, he put down roots and hasn’t left for 23 years. Pitino left Kentucky after eight seasons to scratch the NBA itch a second time, with bad results.

Rick Pitino celebrates with guard Dylan Darling during the Big East conference championship game. | Brad Penner-Imagn Images

On Saturday, I asked each man what he liked about the other’s teams in watching them from afar over the decades.

Self on Pitino: “From afar, I would say how consistently hard they play and how disruptive they are consistently, and he’s done it different ways. He’s done it by pressing and zone pressing. He’s done it by just man-to-man pressure. He’s done it by being one of the first to take advantage of the three-point line. And now he’s doing it by pummeling people inside and stuff, too. So he’s certainly adjusted to his roster, I think, probably as well as anybody in the game.”

Pitino on Self: “They’re always tough. They’re tough-minded, tough physically. They play great defense. They play exciting offense. This team throws more lob dunks than any team I’ve seen this year. He’s always been one of the premier coaches. Ever since I’ve entered this business, he’s always been great each stop along the way, and he’s had a long run at Kansas. He’s a great guy. We did only play him once in Iona and he sent us home crying.”

In point of fact, Pitino has never gone home crying after a loss as a coach. Fuming? That’s another matter. He ranks among the world’s happiest winners and the world’s worst losers, which is one reason why he rarely loses—it’s an intolerable experience.

St. John’s forward Bryce Hopkins, on Pitino after a win vs. Pitino after a loss: “It’s two totally different people. After a win, it’s a lot more joy in the locker room, a lot more upbeat. And after a loss, it’s like some of the worst things that you ever might experience. It’s just tough to be in there. He’s definitely going to get on you, going to tell you what you did wrong and stuff like that. But I feel like it only gets us better. That’s why all the guys chose to come here because he expects us to play hard every possession. He’s going to get the best out of us.”

The two coaches arrive at this game with teams that are on different trajectories at this point.

“They’re as hot as any team in the field,” Self says of the Red Storm, who have won seven straight and 20 of their last 21. They have pounced upon their last four opponents from the opening tip, taking leads of at least 8–0 over Providence, Seton Hall and Connecticut in the Big East tournament and No. 12 seed Northern Iowa in the NCAAs. St. John’s hasn’t trailed for its last 176 minutes and 41 seconds of game action, since overcoming a 5–4 deficit against Seton Hall in the last game of the regular season, on March 6.

Kansas, on the other hand, was blown out of the Big 12 tournament semifinals by Houston and then weathered a bizarre, late-game collapse against No. 13 seed California Baptist on Friday night before pulling out the win. Star guard Darryn Peterson’s disappearance in the final minutes fueled yet another round of eyebrow raising regarding his season. But deep tournament runs have often been launched from shaky beginnings, and Peterson has the capability of shooting an opponent out of the bracket all by himself.

Bill Self celebrates after defeating Arizona in February. | Evert Nelson/The Capital-Journal / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

“He gets to the foul line,” Pitino said of Peterson. “He’s got great size. He’s got a beautiful-looking jump shot with great arc. He’s a great scorer. He’s going to be a great NBA player because he has an NBA game.”

For the Jayhawks, job one is dealing with a former Jayhawk. St. John’s forward Zuby Ejiofor started his career at Kansas, then was recruited over in the transfer portal when Self brought in Hunter Dickinson from Michigan. Ejiofor scored just 31 points in a Kansas uniform, then transferred to play for Pitino and has become an All-American, leading St. John’s in scoring (16.3 points per game), rebounds (7.3), assists (3.5) and blocks (2.2).

“The thing that I’ve been most impressed with about Zuby is when we had him, he was an undersized post,” Self said. “Now he is a complete four-man. So he can play the five, but he can also pass.”

For Kansas, a Sweet 16 berth would be the first since the championship season of 2022. While Self continues to win games with consistency, he hasn’t been hitting the same high points.

For St. John’s, the Sweet 16 would represent a 21st century high—the Johnnies haven’t gotten that far since 1999. Pitino last made it that far in 2015 at Louisville, before his career skidded off the tracks and had to be rebuilt.

Somehow, two of the winningest coaches in college basketball history have never played a game against each other of major consequence. That changes Sunday in San Diego, as one of them scores a late-career coup over the other.

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