This is why they coach, and this is why they play: to win the biggest games in March for their school and for themselves; to shower under the adulation and the confetti and stand tall in triumph on a ladder on top of the world and snip a precious strand of one of the nets.
Rick Pitino yearned for that moment again Saturday night at the Garden, yearned for a back-to-back Big East Tournament championship for St. John’s, for the program he has resurrected and returned to national prominence, for his fellow New Yorkers and for himself.
And to keep a promise he made to wife Joanne that he would win this Big East Conference Tournament championship for her.
And it was as if Pitino and Zuby Ejiofor, with every last Johnnie, delivered a loud and proud message to Dan Hurley and his Huskies: