The 2025-26 NCAA basketball season is under two months away from starting! Teams are officially releasing their schedules, which will consist of non-conference games and, for some conferences, an entire round robin of conference matchups. The Big East is one of the top conferences in the sport, featuring some of the best teams in the nation. Dan Hurley and UConn have dominated over the years and have established themselves as one of the most successful programs in history. Jay Wright did the same with Villanova when he won back-to-back national championships before UConn did.
Last year, however, it was not UConn's or Villanova's year. Instead, St. John's, Marquette, and Creighton performed at a really high level. Legendary coach Rick Pitino is the coach at St. John's, and he led them to a 31-5 record and 18-2 in the conference slate.
His son, Richard Pitino, was the head coach at New Mexico from 2021-25. In the offseason, he took the job at Xavier. Now in the same conference as his father, they will meet twice a season and begin a fun stretch of seasons competing against each other. That is a very cool situation.
The first game will be at Xavier on January 24, according to Jon Rothstein.
This matchup won't be the first time they have coached against each other. Rick is actually 3-1 against his son in four games. The last meeting was last year when New Mexico and St. John's battled at Madison Square Garden in New York. Before that, the other two wins were when he was coaching at Louisville. Richard's lone win against his father was when he was at New Mexico, and his father was at Iona. Now, they have a chance to face each other 2-3 times a season for as long as they are both coaching in the Big East.
