Everything Rick Pitino said following St. John’s loss to Duke

Opening statement

RICK PITINO: One suggestion for the NCAA is, when you have interviews on the court for Duke, for the winning team, and they have time there, the game started before we even came in here. You should have the losing team go first because you left us disappointed in the locker room while the other team’s celebrating, rightfully so.

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You should let the losing team go first and then let the winning team have as long as you want. Just a suggestion because you just left us hanging out there for over a half hour.

THE MODERATOR: I think that’s a solid suggestion, Coach.

RICK PITINO: Thank you. As far as the game is concerned, we felt we had to win the 3-point line in a big way to have any shot at this game, and we did. We were up ten, we could not stop bully drives, bully drives, bully drives, bully drives, four, and we could not stop it, which is a credit to them.

Our guys played with great heart. They made some defensive mistakes down the stretch, but that’s a credit to them.

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We had our moments in the game. We fought hard all season. We’re all very disappointed we didn’t have a chance to win a National Championship, but that’s a credit to Duke.

Q. Rick, did you kind of agree with Dillon’s assessment in terms of you guys didn’t handle their zone well and guys making mistakes on defense in terms of not switching right?

RICK PITINO: We made some good plays in the zone. Zuby missed a foul line jump shot. We missed a wide open 3. I don’t think it was as much as our defense.

Our defense, when we were up ten, up eight, Ruben made a mistake, Ian made no blockout. We had bully drives, bully drives, bully drives. So it was our defense that broke down.

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It wasn’t so much not being in the right place. We just got bullied to the basket. They do that to a lot of teams. That’s why they’re the Number 1 ranked team in the country. We couldn’t defend the bully drives.

Q. Jon Scheyer just said that Caleb Foster had no business playing in this game, but…

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Publish date : 2026-03-28 03:45:00

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