PHOENIX — Rick Pitino had just started his first year as Providence College men’s basketball coach in 1985 after a brief stint as an assistant with the New York Knicks.
And in walked Friars guard Billy Donovan, fearing he’d lose his already minimal role with a new coach, to ask for a release from his scholarship.
“The unfortunate thing for me is I had too many guys coming back, and not one of the guys were any good,” Pitino said to a chorus of laughter Wednesday at US Airways Center, where his Louisville Cardinals will play Michigan State on Thursday in the first game of the NCAA tournament’s West Regional.
While the matter at hand for Pitino is figuring out how to beat top-seeded Michigan State, the subject of Donovan was an easy diversion. Donovan's Florida Gators are playing in the regional's other semifinal game, against Marquette. So Pitino had both the opportunity to tell stories and a willing audience to listen.
“The best thing that happened to us was some people wanted to transfer," he continued. “The first meeting, a young man waddled into my room, and I remembered him, because I worked at the Five Star Camp, and he put on a lot of weight. It was Billy, and he said he wanted to transfer.
“I said, ‘Where to?’
“He said, ‘Northeastern or Fairfield.’
“I said, ‘OK, Billy, I'll call Jim Calhoun and Terry O'Connor,’ who was the coach of Fairfield at the time. He left, and I said a Hail Mary and thanked God he was leaving because he averaged four minutes a game as a freshman and sophomore.’
But Pitino couldn’t get rid of Donovan so easily.
“I called up both coaches. I called up Jim, and I said, ‘I have a Big East guard that wants to transfer.’ I told him who it was and he said, ‘Rick, he can't play for me. He's too slow and doesn't shoot it well enough.’
“I called up Terry O'Connor and he said, ‘We've got much better guards. He never should have gone to Providence.’
“Billy came back, and he's such a nice young man, I couldn't hurt his feelings. He said,
‘Coach, which school wanted me more?’
“I said, ‘Let's forget that, Billy. They're both very interested in you. Tell me, how are you so out of shape? How did you gain all this weight?
“He said, ‘Inactivity — wasn't playing.’
“I said, ‘Tell you what, Billy. We're going to run and press, play 10 or 11 guys a game. I
want you to lose 30 pounds. You're 191. I want you to get down to 160. I want you to do the following drills and then come back Labor Day and be in great shape.’
“He came back in awesome shape, was the third guard on the team that year. The following year he got so good because I've never had in my life anyone work as hard to improve as him in 35 years.”
So Pitino decided to use him as a selling point for the program.
“We put him in a little cowboy hat, spurs and boots. He wouldn't put it on so I made him put it on,” Pitino said. “They put him on the cover of the program. That was the first caption of ‘Billy, The Kid, the fastest gun in the Big East.’ That was the start of his college legend.”
Donovan, whose Gators, like Louisville, will have to pull an upset on Thursday if he's to face his mentor in the region finals, said Pitino’s account is largely accurate.
“When you’re young, you have a tendency to look at a change being better and maybe you don't look at yourself in terms of what you've got to do to get better,” he said. “I don't think that my commitment was where it needed to be to play in the Big East and at that level.”
Donovan said Pitino helped alter his course.
“It obviously changed my career, my life, in a lot of different aspects,” he said. “I learned some incredible lessons through Coach and the investment in the time he made with me.”
Donovan averaged 15.1 points as a junior and 20.6 as a senior, when he led the Friars to the Final Four and earned Southeast Regional Most Valuable Player honors. He credits Pitino with influencing everything in his coaching style as well, from the work ethic he demands from his players to game preparation and scouting.
“There are core beliefs that are built into your program,” said Donovan, who was an assistant under Pitino at Kentucky from 1989-94. “I would sit there and say if Coach Pitino was talking about his core beliefs, how he wanted his team to play, I think you'd say Billy Donovan mirrors a lot of that.”
Pitino is just happy Donovan didn’t take his advice when he told him to make money on Wall Street instead of in coaching.
“He's one of the premier coaches in our game because he lets the players play,” Pitino said. “He's an extremely humble guy, still to this day. He has not changed one iota, except he talks more today than he did back then.”
