St. John's Lou Carnesecca, who turns 99 next week, sits down for exclusive talk with Newsday
Lou Carnesecca has special plans for his upcoming 99th birthday eve.
“Just, let’s get it,” he said. “I’m going to stay up all night, ’til after midnight. Gotta make sure. We don’t want to blow that.”
Carnesecca laughed through that answer during an interview with Newsday on the St. John’s campus on Dec. 20, the day the Red Storm hosted Xavier in their Big East opener — at the arena named for Carnesecca.
So yes, even at his advanced age, he has retained the quipping A-game that was part of his appeal during his glory days coaching the St. John’s men’s basketball team.
Asked about his health, he said, “Of course, I’m on medications. But I have very good care, and I’m fortunate. It must be the olive oil.”
But Carnesecca is far more than the sum of his jokes and oft-told stories. He also is living history, a man who was born in Manhattan on Jan. 5, 1925, has personal ties to most of the sport’s key figures and the acuity to share it all.
Carnesecca does not get around as well as he used to. He arrived for the interview in a wheelchair, then transferred to a walker.
“If it wasn’t for my legs, I could run a mile,” he said.
But he makes regular appearances in and around campus, and he hopes to get to some Red Storm games this season.
He lives in the house near campus he moved into in 1969 with Mary, a childhood sweetheart whom he married in 1950.
What is the secret to such a long marriage? “A wife that fully understands what she married,” Carnesecca said.
He has been in extra demand for interviews lately because of renewed interest in the program tied to the hiring of Rick Pitino — a decision Carnesecca strongly endorsed.
“I think he’s one of the greatest coaches in this country, and we’ve played against all the great ones,” Carnesecca said. “He’s right up there. He’s a winner, dedicated to the nth degree. Loves basketball. It’s his whole life.
“He’ll get us going again . . . We’re in good hands.”
But Carnesecca urged patience.
“It’s a period of adjustment,” he said. “You’re not a miracle worker. It takes time. And unfortunately, people don’t want to wait for that. But you have to. I mean, for a mother to give birth, it’s nine months, and you’ve got to wait nine months.”
Pitino has returned the favor by lauding Carnesecca’s legacy.
“All of us, as young coaches, learned so much from Coach Carnesecca,” Pitino, 71, said at his introductory news conference, which Carnesecca attended.
“Everybody loved him and everybody revered him. We all take a page out of his book.”
HISTORY LESSON
During a 25-minute chat, Carnesecca had a first-person anecdote or observation about the early-to-mid 20th century coaching titans, the likes of Nat Holman, Buck Freeman, Frank McGuire, Joe Lapchick, Red Holzman, Clair Bee, Red Auerbach, Ben Carnevale and others.
St. John's coach Lou Carnesecca and his players celebrate after defeating Boston College, 85-77, in the Big East Championship on March 12, 1983, at Madison Square Garden. Credit: AP/G. Paul Burnett
He said of McGuire, the former St. John’s, North Carolina and South Carolina coach, “Frank could charm a snake. Really, he should have been the mayor of New York. He was good.”
He was particularly close to Freeman, a man who died in 1974 and last coached St. John’s in 1936.
Carnesecca is too young to have watched Freeman’s famed “Wonder Five” play in the early 1930s, but he did meet them at a reunion event years later.
“I hear all my life from coaches, ‘the Wonder Five, the Wonder Five!’ ” he said. “They must be 6-7, 6-8, big, strong roots. We’re having a dinner later on, they’re being honored, and they’re 5-6, 5-7.
“I said, ‘These guys are the ‘Wonder Five?’ They couldn’t beat the Sisters of the Poor,’ ” he said. “But they were good. If you took a shot against them, you would not see the ball for a month.”
Carnesecca naturally remembered the historical quirk that four of the starters were Jewish students at the Vincentian school, “plus Matty Begovich!”
But again, he was too young to have seen those guys in person even though he was born only 33 years after basketball was invented. So what is his first memory as a sports fan? He reeled off the lineup of the late-1930s Yankees, who were favorites of New York’s Italian-American community.
He said his father might not have known a baseball from a bocce ball, “but he knew DiMaggio.”
Upon being reminded of the crushing loss the St. Ann’s team he coached suffered to La Salle in the 1954 city Catholic league final, Carnesecca proceeded to name his entire starting five, as well as the other team’s unlikely hero.
Gerry Glynn made a last-second shot at the 69th Regiment Armory to give La Salle a 54-52 victory, ending St. Ann’s 31-game winning streak.
“[Glynn] went to Yale,” Carnesecca said, correctly. “I think that was the last shot he ever made.” (That part is an exaggeration.)
After the game, Carnesecca said he walked aimlessly in the snow. The next morning his wife asked him to shovel the driveway. He did, sort of. He was in such a fog, he shoveled a neighbor’s driveway instead.
“I didn’t sleep for three weeks,” he said.
St. John's men's basketball head coach Rick Pitino. Credit: AP/Corey Sipkin
THE CURRENT COLLEGE LANDSCAPE
Carnesecca is not a fan of one-and-done players and the transfer portal, saying, “I think there has to be some adjustments made. I don’t particularly care for this jumping around every year. I think there has to be some regulations.”
But he is pleased that players are getting paid through name, image and likeness deals.
“I said that many years ago, that we ought to pay the players,” he said. “I mean, some of them were getting paid anyway. But I think it’s good. They deserve it.”
As long as there are “no shenanigans,” he said. “Knowing human nature, things are going happen. Let’s see. I hope we don’t blow it apart, that’s all I can say.”
John Thompson is presented with a sweater by Lou Carnesecca at Madison Square garden. Credit: Newsday/Phillip Davies
A LEGACY AT ST. JOHN’S
Carnesecca went 526-200 in 24 seasons at St. John’s, which he led to the 1985 NCAA Final Four, where it lost to Georgetown.
He had been an assistant when he succeeded Lapchick in 1965-66 and stayed until 1991-92, with a three-year break in the early 1970s to coach the ABA Nets.
“The only thing that escaped was the NCAA championship,” he said. “It’s something that I would have loved to have, but not everybody can be president.”
Carnesecca’s parents were Italian immigrants who ran a grocery store on the East Side. His father wanted him to be a doctor.
“I said, ‘Pop, I don’t want to be a doctor,’ ” he recalled. “I thank God in his infinite wisdom. He knew I would have caused more deaths than the bubonic plague.”
Legendary St. John's basketball coach Lou Carnesecca is seen during an interview with Newsday at St. John's University on Dec. 20. Credit: Ed Quinn
Carnesecca said his association with St. John’s, now in its eighth decade, is “the greatest thing that ever happened to me. I’m serious — not blowing smoke.”
What is it like having an arena named for you — and a statue in the lobby to boot?
“It’s wonderful for my parents,” he said. “They could hardly speak English . . . Only in America.”
What would he have said when he retired in 1992 if someone had told him he still would be going relatively strong as he approached 99 years old?
Said Carnesecca, “The old man is pretty good upstairs.” Then he laughed.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
