Lou Carnesecca, St. John's legendary coach, dies at 99

Lou Carnesecca, the always passionate, colloquially erudite Hall of Fame St. John’s basketball coach who reveled in the sport’s exhilarating highs and occasionally burdensome lows, died Saturday, the university confirmed. He was 99.

He would have turned 100 on Jan. 5.

Carnesecca won 526 games, more than any other coach in St. John’s history, and in his 24 seasons, he never failed to qualify his St. John’s teams for postseason play in either the NCAA Tournament (18 times) or NIT (six). His 1985 team advanced to the Final Four, featuring back-to-back college Players of the Year Chris Mullin and Walter Berry. His teams made the Elite Eight in 1979 and 1991.

The university said it was notified by a family member that Carnesecca died in a hospital on Saturday surrounded by his family. St. John's said Carnesecca “endeared himself to generations of New Yorkers with his wit and warmth.”

Carnesecca was held in exalted status as a New York sports institution, widely sought out and paid respect by colleagues. He spoke in a rasping, cracking voice and never was hesitant to loudly berate officials but was just as likely to share a whispered confidence to acquaintances whom he barely knew with a sincere touch on the arm.

Only 5-6 and never more than a junior varsity player as a student at St. John’s — though he hit over .300 for the first St. John’s team to qualify for baseball’s College World Series in 1949  — Carnesecca often made light of his cartoonish gyrations while coaching. While his sideline seat remained forever empty, he would slide on both knees, arms outstretched; walk on his knees; spin up to his feet; turn and racewalk in the direction of an errant pass.

During one game against Fordham at Madison Square Garden in the late 1960s, he recalled, he raced downcourt alongside guard Carmine Calzonetti, eventually standing under the basket when Calzonetti completed a fast-break layup.

“I’m like those guys in a Shakespeare play,” Carnesecca said, “and they’re so caught up in it that they go right off the stage, out the side door of the theater, onto Seventh Avenue. Still sword fighting in the street!”

He always wore brown pants when coaching, he said, because brown didn’t show the grit. In the 1980s, when the Big East established itself as the country’s best basketball conference and the subsequent national spotlight shined on Carnesecca for the first time, he became known for the lucky sweaters he wore for games.

Because his predecessor, Joe Lapchick, once described the coaching life as “peacock today, feather duster tomorrow,” Carnesecca kept a feather duster in his St. John’s office.

Carnesecca went 526-200 for St. John's from 1965-70 and 1973-92. In between, he coached the Long Island-based New York Nets for three seasons, going 114-138 and reaching the 1972 ABA Finals before losing to the Indiana Pacers. He retired after the 1992 season and was inducted into the Hall of Fame a month later. In 2004, St. John’s renamed Alumni Hall, its on-campus basketball facility, Carnesecca Arena.

Long after retiring, he remained associated with his beloved St. John’s, regularly attending games and other events on campus.

Carnesecca coached more than 40 NBA draft picks, including first-rounders LeRoy Ellis (1962), Sonny Dove (1967), John Warren (1969), Mel Davis (1973), George Johnson (1978), Chris Mullin (1985), Bill Wennington (1985), Walter Berry (1986), Mark Jackson (1987), Jayson Williams (1990) and Malik Sealy (1992).

Two weeks before his 99th birthday, he spoke to Newsday while visiting the law school to sit for an interview for the university.

“It’s been my whole life,” he said that day. “I’ve been here since 1947. It's the greatest thing that ever happened to me.”

He was amused by how he had grown more popular in retirement than he was when coaching.

“Of course, I’ve become a genius,” he said in late 2023. “I haven’t lost a game [since 1992]. Can’t beat that record.”

Carnesecca enjoyed his role as living history, with firsthand knowledge of many of the sport’s most prominent figures of the mid-20th century.

“I lived it,” he said. “Marvelous people, great basketball men. Buck [Freeman], probably the greatest coach we ever had, really. He was way ahead of his time.”

Freeman took over as St. John’s coach in 1927 and died in 1974.

When asked about the blessing of a long life and a sharp memory, Carnesecca said, “I hope I don’t lose that, because that’s a great part of it.”

He acknowledged his personal brand benefited from his long association with the city of his birth.

“The biggest thing that happened to me is that I was able to coach all my career in New York, high school, college and the pros, and that was a big advantage,” he said in 2023.

“It really, really helped me, because I knew all the people around. I knew the newspaper guys, the high school coaches. St. John’s was our life, really going way back to Buck Freeman and the ‘Wonder Five’ [St. John’s early-1930s team].”

Luigi P. Carnesecca, known far and wide as “Looie,” was born Jan. 5, 1925, in New York City, the only child of Italian immigrants. His father had been a stonemason in the old country but opened an Italian deli on Manhattan’s East Side when Lou was a child. His father wanted him to be a doctor. “All Italian fathers wanted their sons to be doctors and play the accordion,” he said.

Instead, he began coaching St. Ann’s Academy (now Archbishop Molloy High School) in 1950, and his first game was at Madison Square Garden, the preliminary before a Knicks game (which was a common practice then).

The same year, he married Mary Chiesa, whom he had known since grammar school. On their honeymoon in Puerto Rico, he took time to do some refereeing at a local basketball game, which resulted in fans throwing stones at him because of a disputed call. Mary took the next plane home, she said.

“We grew up together,” Carnesecca said in 2023. “We had a grocery store on the East Side and her people came in, did all their shopping every day.

“So we were sweethearts when we were kids. I went into the service, came out and we’ve been together since. In those days, you married girls from the block where you live.”

Besides his wife, Carnesecca is survived by his daughter, Enes, his granddaughter, Ieva, and, according to his wife, the “hundreds of sons” who were his basketball players.

“The game,” Carnesecca once said, “I think it’s a melody. A composition. It can flow. There is a beauty to it.” But, too, “it’s an agony. It’s a suffering. And it’s still a game! Why? Why do we torment ourselves? I ask myself, ‘What the hell am I getting so worked up about?' ”

Because, he concluded, he loved it so much.

With Neil Best and Roger Rubin