Rick Pitino sat behind the St. John’s table inside the Marriott Marquis at Big East Media Day extremely confident.
Not only did he gush about his team, which he called the most talented during his Red Storm tenure, but he was sure that his four players battling eligibility issues — Quinn Ellis, Babacar Sane, Keyshawn Hall, and Reed Bailey — would be cleared.
“We feel everybody is going to be fine,” Pitino said. “Everybody’s going to be playing…Those guys are working their tails off right now. We let the courts handle that.”
The legal process has already begun after the NCAA ruled Sane ineligible due to his G-League experience and he is now heading to court. The Queens Supreme Court granted him a temporary restraining order (TRO) making him currently eligible with a hearing scheduled for Monday morning that could determine his fate.
Auburn transfer Keyshawn Hall is also taking his lawsuit for a fifth year of eligibility to the Queens Supreme Court after potential issues have risen about the success of Ohio court case he is listed in.
Reed Bailey, an Indiana transfer, is involved in the state of California case that was given a TRO to be eligible.
There has yet to be a ruling from the NCAA on British point guard Quinn Ellis, who previously played in the EuroLeague. St. John’s remains confident that Ellis will be cleared to play based on a recent ruling regarding Arkansas’ Miikka Muurinen, who is free to play for the Razorbacks.
“I think we have a front court talent as good as anybody in the country,” Pitino added. “Now they just have to learn how to play together.”
There is no specific timeline for rulings on its players but sources inside the Red Storm program are hopeful and confident there will be much more clarity ahead of the team’s first exhibition game on October 14.
However, for Rick Pitino, the chaos of the offseason and uncertainty of the preseason is not a detriment, rather something else to get accustomed to in the constant changing landscape of college athletics.
“I sat [at home] a week before Christmas Eve not coaching basketball and, all of a sudden, Christmas Eve I’m heading to play a team from Moscow in Greece, which I’ve never been,” he reminisced about his time away from the sport.
“So, from that point on I’ve always believed adjust and adapt to whatever environment you’re in. Adjust and adapt. I don’t complain about the situation we are in, in college basketball.”
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