Everything Rick Pitino and Iona Said After NCAA Tournament Loss to Alabama

6 min readMar 21, 2021

Herb Jones led Alabama with 20 points as the Crimson Tide basketball team pulled off a 68–55 victory in the 2021 NCAA Tournament in Indianapolis on Saturday.

Iona was the fifth program Rick Pitino had brought to the tournament after the Gaels (12–6) went 50 days without playing a game in midseason due to COVID-19 problems. They won the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference tournament as a 9 seed.

Pitino had his worst seed ever as second-seeded Alabama (25–6) advanced to the second round.

Here’s everything Iona had to say after the game:

Rick Pitino

Well, I’m proud of our guys. We thought we could beat Alabama, to be honest with you. We had to cut down the three, cut down their transition, keep them away from the basket, and then do a lot of positive things offensively.

With the game on the line, we gave up two threes. Because they’re used to running back in the lane, and against this basketball team you can’t do that. I’m real proud of our guys. We have been offensively challenged all year because we’re in our first year where we had to bring in 12 new players. We’re going to be better next year because we have more troops coming in offensively to help us.

But they gave me their heart the entire year, so I’m real proud of them. Unfortunately we didn’t have enough weapons to play against Alabama.

Q. I wanted to ask you, can you reflect on what this whole season, return has been like, especially being back here where you’ve had so much success?

RICK PITINO: Tonight we thought with every phase we could stay in the game. The one area I’m surprised at was the rebounding. They beat us 42–26. Now, we did a great job defending them. They had 13 second shots. That was the key. Take away the three, but don’t give them a second shot. We did, and that was our demise.

I’m real proud to be at Iona. I think we can build something really special. We’re in the infancy stages of recruiting right now. We’re going to recruit bigger, better players. But I couldn’t be prouder of the guys that are here.

So we learned a lot. We have a lot of difficulty scoring because it’s the first year. But I just wanted to focus on defense, and they did a good job with that. And we’ll get better, we’ll get much better. I’m proud of Asante and Isaiah moving on, hopefully for greener pastures for them. They’re two terrific guys that gave me a lot this year.

Q. Overall what did this team, in particular this year, mean to you? How good is this Alabama team moving forward?

RICK PITINO: Well, they’re a very good team. It all depends. If you stop the three and you keep them in the 60s, low 70s, all their losses have come that way. If they’re good at the three, they’re tough. They’re very good off the bounce, they have a great system. They’re very good defensively, as well. They’re very good.

I don’t know who they’re going to play or how far they can go. I know we thought we could win tonight. We didn’t win. We’re very disappointed. But we give all the credit to Alabama for a great victory.

Q. This season in particular, what did it mean to you to get back into the college game, get back here into the big dance for you personally?

RICK PITINO: Well, I tell you, the thing is never really about me. I came back to Iona, I wanted no part of the so-called big-time any more. I had enough of that. I wanted to take a smaller school, like a Providence, like an Iona, small school, and try to make it big. But I wanted no part of any of that other. I had enough of that. It turned me off, to be quite honest with you, in a lot of different areas.

Everything Rick Pitino and Iona Said After NCAA Tournament Loss to Alabama

Rick Pitino

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