Rick Pitino’s historic 900th win was a milestone 50 years in the making

Win No. 1 would have to wait. First, there would be a long trip to the mainland, where the University of Hawaii Rainbows would only dress seven players. Four others, including their best player, had just been tossed off the team for filming a TV commercial that had gotten the attention of the NCAA. 

That indiscretion had cost the head coach, Bruce O’Neil, his job. 

So when the Rainbows landed in California for a two-game road trip through Long Beach and San Jose, the kid who led them off the plane was a 23-year-old named Rick Pitino. 

“This won’t surprise you,” says Pete Gillen, the longtime coach at Xavier and Providence and Virginia, who was also on that plane, and who in that February of 1976 was, like Pitino, a young assistant just at the start of his basketball adventure. “He did everything 100 mph. He’d ask you a question, and before you could answer he’d walk around the block twice and be back in time to hear what you had to say.”