Jack Pitino took the news hard.
A lot of people, after all, were counting on him.
Last Saturday morning, when the 7-year-old’s dad – first-year University of New Mexico basketball coach Richard Pitino – tested positive for COVID-19, Jack had one question.
Would that night’s Lobo game in the Pit vs. Utah State be able to go on if Jack wasn’t there?
“When we told my son Richard had COVID, he didn’t care about Richard. He didn’t ask how he felt. ‘I can’t go to the game?'” Jill Pitino, Jack’s mom and Richard’s wife, recalls of the moment they broke the news to their three children, Jack and sisters Ava and Zoe.