A year ago, Rick Pitino watched a Lobos game in the Pit, before he had to catch a redeye back to New York.
The Lobos lost and his son, UNM coach Richard Pitino, didn’t feel like a postgame meal, instead dropping dad off at the airport three hours before his flight.
Sunday, after the Lobos held off dad’s Iona Gaels 82-74 in an intense Pit-of-old atmosphere with an announced crowd of 14,534, Richard Pitino was more open to a postgame meal with his father.
“I am extremely appreciative that he played this game,” Richard Pitino said of his father’s decision to play the game in the Pit as his team was headed from New York to Hawaii for a Christmas week tournament.