NEW YORK (AP) — Rick Pitino won his first Big East Coach of the Year award Wednesday and RJ Luis Jr. took Player of the Year honors after they propelled a resurgent St. John’s program to its best regular season in almost four decades.
UConn forward Liam McNeeley was selected the league’s Freshman of the Year despite missing eight games with a high ankle sprain.
Voting is done by Big East head coaches, who aren’t allowed to pick their own players. Pitino, Luis and McNeeley were feted with similar conference awards Tuesday by The Associated Press.
In his second season at the school, Pitino guided sixth-ranked St. John’s (27-4, 18-2) to its first outright Big East regular-season title in 40 years after the team was picked fifth in the preseason coaches’ poll. A winner of national championships at Kentucky and Louisville, the 72-year-old Hall of Famer became the first coach to lead five programs to regular-season conference crowns. He is the winningest active Division I basketball coach with 881 victories.
Earlier in his career, Pitino enjoyed highly successful Big East stints at Providence and Louisville, taking both programs to the Final Four. But his five previous conference Coach of the Year awards came in the Southeastern Conference (1991, 1996), Conference USA (2005) and the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (2022, 2023).
Pitino claimed three national coach of the year awards in 1987 with Providence, but Georgetown’s John Thompson garnered the Big East prize that season.
Lou Carnesecca (1983, ’85, ’86), Brian Mahoney (1993) and Mike Anderson (2021) were the previous St. John’s coaches to win.
Luis ranked fourth in the Big East in scoring with a team-high 18.1 points per game and sixth in rebounding at 7.1 per game as the Red Storm matched a school record for regular-season wins. The junior wing from Miami averaged 24.3 points over the final three games and became the first conference Player of the Year from St. John’s since Walter Berry in 1985-86.
That season was the last time the Johnnies earned the top seed in the Big East Tournament — until this one.
McNeeley, a touted recruit from Texas, averaged 14.7 points and a team-best 6.2 rebounds for the third-place Huskies (22-9, 14-6). He scored a season-high 38 points in a Feb. 11 victory at Creighton, a Big East record for a UConn rookie.
McNeeley was selected the conference’s freshman of the week seven times and became the second consecutive Connecticut player to win the award, following Stephon Castle last year.
All three awards will be presented Wednesday afternoon at a ceremony inside Madison Square Garden a couple of hours before the Big East Tournament tips off.
