John's University. He was also the head coach of Greece's senior national team. He was the first coach to lead three different schools Providence, Kentucky, and Louisville to the NCAA Final Four, and is the only coach to win a national championship at two different schools. In June , the NCAA suspended Pitino for five games of the β18 season for a perceived lack of oversight in an escort sex scandal at the University of Louisville involving recruits.
Louisville's national championship from was eventually vacated and is being appealed by the university. In September, Pitino was implicated in a federal investigation involving bribes to recruits , which resulted in Louisville firing him for cause.
He was later exonerated of these accusations and soon returned to coaching after a brief stint as a broadcaster. On March 20, , he was named head basketball coach at St. He was the team captain of the St. Pitino enrolled at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in At a listed height of 1. Pitino held the tenth spot at UMass for career assists, with , [ 11 ] until Chaz Williams β became the leader in career assists following his final season with the Minutemen.
Pitino was a freshman at the same time future NBA legend Julius Erving spent his junior and final year at UMass, although the two never played on the same team because freshmen were ineligible to play varsity basketball at the time. Other teammates of Pitino's include Al Skinner , who also went on to become a successful college coach, and baseball player Mike Flanagan , who went on to pitch in the major leagues and win the AL Cy Young Award in Pitino earned his degree from UMass in Pitino started his coaching career as a graduate assistant at the University of Hawaii in , and became a full-time assistant in Pitino served as Hawaii's interim head coach late in the β76 season.
Pitino led Hawaii for their final six games, going 2β4 in the span. According to the report, Pitino was implicated in 8 of the 64 infractions that led the university to be placed on probation. The violations involving Pitino included providing round-trip air fare for a player between New York and Honolulu , arranging for student-athletes to receive used cars for season tickets, and handing out coupons to players for free food at McDonald's.
