$45,000,000 worth Rick Pitino reveals "secret sauce" behind stellar player development: "Our practices are very difficult"

St. John's coach Rick Pitino lifted the Red Storm to their first Big East regular season and tournament championships since 1985 last season. Pitino also led the much-hyped Red Storm to the second round of the 2025 NCAA Tournament.

During Thursday's segment of "The Herd," the $45 million worth Pitino (as per Celebrity Net Worth) revealed the secret behind his stellar player development over the years (7:29).

"Well, we have player development sessions every morning, Monday through Friday, where we go three to four different sessions with four players," Rick Pitino said. "And we try to take players like Donovan Mitchell and Terry Rozier, who maybe is not ranked top 20–25 in high school. They've got a little bit of a weakness. Donovan Mitchell had a weakness with the arc on his jump shot. "Everybody’s got a weakness coming out that’s not top 10. We try to take those player development sessions and make the players better. Our practices are very difficult. But I will say this: they’re not long. We don’t go more than two hours, but we go hard for two hours. We’re up and down for two hours. If I make a correction, it’s going to be within 12 seconds, and then we’re moving on."

Rick Pitino credited with player development acumen

During a pre-draft news conference, former Florida Gators star Walter Clayton Jr. credited Rick Pitino with his player development acumen and predicted that his new acquisition for St. John's, Ian Jackson, would thrive in his offensive system next season after transferring from North Carolina.

“The game nowadays, you need five guys on the court that could score at all times,” Clayton said. “I think Coach P’s whole thing, he runs a Euro League offense, so it’s just going to be guys that know how to play basketball. It’s going to be multiple guys coming off ball screens, multiple guys coming off pin-downs and different actions. “He kind of moved me over. I was kind of pass first [guard] and with Coach P I became more of a score first guard. He opened me up to that.”

Walter Clayton Jr. played for Rick Pitino when he was the Iona Gaels coach and after averaging 7.3 points as a freshman, his production exploded to 16.8 points as a sophomore. Afterward, he entered the transfer portal and departed for the Florida Gators where he won the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player before he was drafted No. 18 overall by the Utah Jazz.

Edited by Nadim El Kak