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Immediately after Xavier basketball lost to Illinois in the Round of 64 of the NCAA Tournament, head coach Sean Miller left to be the new head coach at Texas. Now, Xavier has its new man at the head of the program. The Musketeers are hiring New Mexico's Richard Pitino to be their new head coach, according to college basketball insider Jon Rothstein.
“Sources: Xavier will hire New Mexico's Richard Pitino as its next head basketball coach,” Rothstein reported on X, formerly Twitter.
Pitino had a lot of success at New Mexico over the last few seasons, reaching the NCAA Tournament for the second consecutive year in 2025. The Lobos won the Mountain West Conference Tournament Championship in 2024 and took home the regular season conference title in 2025.
Pitino got his start as a head coach at Florida International in 2012-13. After one season there, Pitino went up to the Big Ten at Minnesota, but didn't quite have the results he surely would have been hoping for. The Golden Gophers made two NCAA Tournament appearances in eight seasons under Pitino, winning just one game across those two trips.
It felt like the Boston native finally had found a home at New Mexico, and the Lobos were finding their groove as a program with him at the helm. However, the decision of star point guard Donovan Dent to enter the transfer portal on Tuesday morning signaled that something was up on the coaching front.
Of course, the instant reaction to this news will be the look ahead to next year's matchups between Xavier and St. John's which will match Pitino up with his dad, Rick Pitino. The two have faced off before, but now will likely play each other at least twice in 2025-26.
While the younger Pitino hasn't quite proven to be on his dad's level yet, there's no question that he can absolutely coach. There's also the possibility that Dent follows his head coach to Xavier, which would give the Musketeers an instant superstar in year one of his tenure.
Pitino has a career record of 247-186 coming into Xavier. He will look to improve on that during his time in Cincinnati and get Xavier back to the top of the Big East.
