(Yahoo Sports Photo)
Rick Pitino is returning to college basketball as a head coach. Iona is naming the former University of Louisville and Kentucky coach as their new skipper to replace Tim Cluess who resigned Thursday citing health reasons.
“I’m incredibly excited. I started my journey in basketball in Manhattan. I’m now able to end my journey in New Rochelle. I’ve admired the stellar job that Tim Cluess has done. I’m going to try and carry that on and elevate it to prominence,” Pitino told Jon Rothstein of CBS Sports.
Pitino takes over an Iona program that made six trips to the NCAA Tournament in the past decade and won the conference title five times.
He has 647 career college wins and a national championship while he was Kentucky’s coach in 1995. He won a second national title at Louisville in 2013, but that championship and four seasons of accomplishments were vacated by the NCAA due to an escort sex scandal involving recruits. Pitino was fired by the school in October 2017.
