Pitino, use Martelli

Cleveland – Richard Pitino looked right and did not hesitate to take his son Jack to the scene.

The New Mexico coach wondered before the meeting of the first round with the 10th seed Lobos with the seventh Marquette on Friday, who may have chosen to win everything in his bracket.

“St. John’s,” came the answer.

The same St. Johns, who happens to be trained by Jack’s grandfather, Hall of Famer Rick Pitino.

“They go out loud,” said Richard Pitino on Thursday with a smile. “You see where his loyalty is.”

This is both the blessing and the curse to have a surname that has had a synonym for March Madness success for decades.

Sometimes, no matter what you do – such as, for example, you lead your team to consecutive NCAA tournaments, as Richard Pitino did in New Mexico this season – you are not even the favorite coach of your own family.

It’s a good thing that Pitino was made comfortable in this position in this position a long time ago. On the other hand, he knows that he had no great choice in view of his profession.

Bryant coach Phil Martelli Jr., who played for his father Phil Sr. at Saint Joseph’s in the early 2000s when the Hawks came briefly in the brackets behind the guards Jameer Nelson and Delonte West.

Even if Pitino and Martelli have built their own career, they are both aware that the shadow of their fathers is never too far away. It could appear like a burden. You insist that it is not so.

Martelli, who led the school of Smithfield, Ri, to her second tournament place after capturing the American East championship last week, has lost an overview of the frequency of the day, as he will hear his father’s words come out of his own mouth. Maybe there are three. Maybe there are five. It is probably more.

There is a long list of people that the 43-year-old Martelli believes that he has shaped him. His father is at the top, although he points out that Phil Sr.’s impact on his life goes beyond every drill and every game that can be worked in the Huddle.

“(He is supervised) more than the coach than the coach to be honest with you,” said Martelli, whose 15th team will play the second -victory of Michigan on Friday. “He is always about humans. Yes, we train basketball, but if you do something in life … it is up to people.”

But both Martelli and Pitino made the goal of carving their own way. Pitino briefly came to Louisville in Louisville at the end of the 2000s until an opening in Florida appeared when the then assistant from Gator, Shaka Smart, took over the head coach at the VCU.

The then Florida coach Billy Donovan and the younger Pitino had known each other in primary school since Pitino and Donovan raised three points for the older Pitino in Providence in the mid-1980s. But Richard Pitino called and let the side of his father have the best decision he ever made because it forced him out of his comfort zone.

“It made me think differently and not try to be my father,” said Richard Pitino, whose voice almost sounds like a copy of his father, minus the New York accent. “He is a great coach to emulate and not understand me wrong, but it really learned to be my own husband.”

There are differences. His father is relentlessly intense – even at the age of 72 – and was never shy to express his players as loudly and bluntly as possible.

Richard Pitino is not quite like that.

“He tries to keep (from his) father, much more on the screaming side, the crazy side,” said Donovan Dent, Lobos Guard. “Coach P is more relaxed. He will come to you, but like his father on the coaching page, he is not like that.”

This does not mean that Pitino is exactly cold.

Nelly Junior Joseph, Senior striker of New Mexico, played for Rick Pitino in Iona for three years before moving to Lobos after Rick had gone to St. John’s. During a recent exercise, Junior Joseph came to Richard and jokingly said to him: “I am not yet shouted by another Pitino. It’s five years of both of you. I’m full of you.”

Junior Joseph made jokes. Pitino and Martelli did not talk when they talked about how to see their fathers in March they moved into the work of their own life.

A few decades ago, Richard Pitino and Phil Martelli Jr. were where Jack Pitino and Philip Martelli were on Thursday and tacitly sat and observed how their fathers went to work in College basketball during the most intensive month.

Perhaps Philip Martelli will enter his father’s footsteps and grandfather. Maybe he won’t do it. That must be decided for him. Everything that Phil Martelli Jr. wants is that his eldest son enjoys the journey, a lesson he really appreciated until he found first -hand, how difficult it was to bring a team – and a family – to this moment.

“It’s a special thing,” said Phil Martelli jr .. “It is something special to be in the tournament.”