Rick Pitino Wins 1st Big East Coach Of The Year Award And Rj Luis Jr. Is Player Of The Year

Rick Pitino won his first Big East Coach of the Year award Wednesday and RJ Luis Jr. took Player of the Year honors after they propelled a resurgent St. John's program to its best regular season in almost four decades.

UConn forward Liam McNeeley was selected the league's Freshman of the Year despite missing eight games with a high ankle sprain.

Voting is done by Big East head coaches, who aren't allowed to pick their own players. Pitino, Luis and McNeeley were feted with similar conference awards Tuesday by The Associated Press.

In his second season at the school, Pitino guided sixth-ranked St. John's 27-4, 18-2 to its first outright Big East regular-season title in 40 years after the team was picked fifth in the preseason coaches' poll. A winner of national championships at Kentucky and Louisville, the 72-year-old Hall of Famer became the first coach to lead five programs to regular-season conference crowns. He is the winningest active Division I basketball coach with 881 victories.

Earlier in his career, Pitino enjoyed highly successful Big East stints at Providence and Louisville, taking both programs to the Final Four. But his five previous conference Coach of the Year awards came in the Southeastern Conference 1991, 1996, Conference USA 2005 and the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference 2022, 2023.