St. John's Rick Pitino wears white suit to Red Storm's White-Out game against Villanova
St. John's head coach Rick Pitino wears a white suit during a Big East men’s basketball game against the Villanova Wildcats at Madison Square Garden on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
Rick Pitino never should have doubted it: White looks good on him in any circumstance.
Pitino brought the sellout crowd at the Garden to its feet before Saturday night’s 89-57 victory over Villanova by donning his signature white suit for the program’s annual “White Out” game.
Pitino actually had been considering leaving it in the closet because the No. 15 Red Storm were coming off a humiliating 72-40 loss to No. 6 Connecticut in Hartford on Wednesday night.
He wondered if donning a white suit that he had custom-made in the fall for the occasion might make it seem as if he were not being serious enough about a game he called the “most important” in his three seasons as St. John’s coach.
“I went out to a special tailor for the first time in my life and had a white suit made up,” Pitino said Friday. “I said, ‘You know, this could be one of my last white suits if I finished coaching this year — which is not true — but I said, ‘There's no freaking way I'm wearing a white suit after that loss.’ So I just wasted a lot of money.”
Newsday, however, asked if he thought leaving it home might send the wrong message — that perhaps Wednesday’s loss was impacting how he treated Saturday’s game.
“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Pitino replied.
“Actually, [Newsday’s Roger Rubin] changed my mind,” Pitino said after beating the Wildcats. “He said, ‘Do you think the fans will lose confidence? And are you not confident now? Is that why?’
“And I said, ‘Geez, I didn’t look at it that way.’ And I thought about it, and I said, ‘You know what, we haven’t lost in it. Let me do it.’ ”
But he also had coffee with a group of friends Friday morning and they told him they’d all bought white suits for the occasion. At their meeting, he told them he’d decided not to wear it and called their plan off.
But after reconsidering, he got back in touch with them.
“They all planned it three weeks ago and I told them, ‘Guys, put it aside. I’m not going to wear it,’ ” Pitino said. “And then [after thinking about it], I texted them all and said ‘Bring it on. We’re going to wear it.’ ”
Pitino came out to raucous applause and then had the group of friends from the coffee gathering pose with him at midcourt, all of them in white suits.
Roger Rubin returned to Newsday in 2018 to write about high schools, colleges and baseball following 20 years at the Daily News. A Baseball Hall of Fame voter since 2011, he has covered 13 MLB postseasons and 14 NCAA Final Fours.
