NEW YORK — Tom O’Grady grew up in Floral Park, N.J., a sports-loving kid on Long Island who idolized the great St. John’s teams of the 1970s and ’80s. Money was tight, but every now and again he and his dad would get lucky and score seats up in the rafters at Madison Square Garden. From afar, he idolized Rick Pitino. Loved the way the guy coached, all the way back to his Providence days, becoming especially enamored when he took over his beloved Knicks.
O’Grady eventually graduated from Manhattan College, became a trader, climbed the ladder, noodled around in all sorts of investments and eventually connected with a partner to launch Phocus Water, a caffeinated water brand. Twenty years ago he moved to Louisville, married a U of L girl. She wanted basketball tickets. He got some lousy ones and asked his buddy and right-hand man, Shannon Weaver, who used to be an assistant under Cliff Ellis at Auburn, how to score some better seats.
Weaver put him in touch with Vinny Tatum, Pitino’s former manager at Kentucky and sort of Pitino jack of all trades. That led to a dinner invitation, where the two New Yorkers hit it off immediately. Soon, O’Grady became a regular part of Pitino’s entourage, pledging his loyalty to the coach at Louisville, then Iona and now St. John’s.
Which is how the bald, plaid-jacketed O’Grady became a central figure in a technical foul parade and later found himself leaning against a column in the bowels of MSG, sharing his life story with a scrum of reporters minutes after UConn ousted the Red Storm, 95-90 in a taut Big East tournament semifinal.
Only in New York? Try only at the Big East. This, remember, is the place and the tournament where Jim Boeheim, also irate with the officials, once headbutted his associate commissioner when Mike Tranghese came to check on Boeheim after Georgetown beat Syracuse.
The tournament rarely disappoints, and this game certainly delivered — on the court, and on the sidelines. Pitino’s restoration project at St. John’s, now on the fast track, has injected life, energy and a healthy dose of zest into the league. He is the king of New York and the dean of the conference coaches, but he does not walk into a fraternity filled with people lining up to kiss his ring. There is respect, tons of respect, but there is no bowing, particularly from Dan Hurley. Hurley already has done at UConn what Pitino is trying to do at St. John’s, resuscitating the once great program back to life and into a force of nature. The defending national champions are scary good, so deep and talented that Pitino quipped before his semifinal date that the best way to beat the Huskies was to hope at least six of them came down with COVID-19.
Both prideful, stubborn, fiery and intense, they’ve exchanged a few polite words over where to play the next St. John’s-Connecticut regular-season game. Pitino would like it to be at Carnesecca Arena for Looie’s 100th; Hurley would prefer not. Mostly what this is, though, is some good old-fashioned posturing and jockeying for top place on the dog pile. Hurley has it; Pitino would like it.
Toss all of that into Friday night in New York, the Johnnies on a seven-game run since Pitino publicly lambasted his players and UConn obliterating its opponents like some sort of basketball Thanos of inevitability, and well, it was ripe for something.
The something happened on an otherwise innocuous foul call against Joel Soriano as Cam Spencer drove to the basket. Pitino erupted in frustration at the whistle. “I felt that things weren’t going our way,’’ he said. “And I will say when I made those statements, they were contrived, and they were statements I wanted to make, and they were technicals I wanted to get.’’ Justly awarded, Pitino still stalked down the sideline after James Breeding, before his assistants turned his back toward the huddle.
O’Grady was sitting a few seats down from the St. John’s bench, and also a scorer’s table away from the UConn bench. He is, Pitino said with a grin, “certifiably insane. And he has deep psychological problems with officials.’’ Pitino, in fact, once threatened to oust him from a Louisville game at North Carolina if he didn’t simmer down and only granted him courtside ticket access after he secured a promise for good behavior.
So the technical — and maybe more, the officiating in general — didn’t exactly sit well with O’Grady. He may or may not have shared that opinion. While Pitino was going back to the huddle, Hurley walked down from his bench. He said that a “short guy in a red blazer’’ was not only on the court yelling at the refs, he was yelling at Hurley. “I was just trying to help the officials, you know?” Hurley said with a smirk. “They might not have seen it.’’ O’Grady claims he merely pointed out to Breeding that Hurley was out of the coaches box. “I didn’t say anything to him,’’ O’Grady said. Relayed that information, Hurley belly laughed. “Yeah, all right,’’ he said. “He looks like a straight shooter.’’
Breeding provided the final word in the he said/he said, awarding a technical for Hurley, who screamed that he wanted O’Grady ejected. Madison Square Garden, already on tenterhooks, erupted, and the young security guard meant to patrol that small bit of paradise stood on in abject terror.
His older co-workers managed to get everyone to their corners and finish the half, but Hurley lingered. He was trying to tell officials not to toss O’Grady. “Not because I thought he was a good guy,’’ Hurley said. “I thought it might be bad luck. Karma.’’ O’Grady thought Hurley was trying to throw him out. Mike Repole, the co-founder of Vitamin Water and one of St. John’s biggest boosters, got threatened with ejection for staring down the officials. Tatum sipped a bourbon. The young security guard, giddy that he was trending on Twitter, posed for a picture with O’Grady, and out of the sea of chaos, a St. John’s jacketed priest wandered onto the court.
“It’s going to be a long night,’’ said a security guard named Dominic.
At the end of the half, Dan Hurley went back to Madison Square Garden security to ask for the St. John’s fan courtside to be removed. pic.twitter.com/ggBadBoeB2
— John Fanta (@John_Fanta) March 15, 2024
Back in the locker room, Hurley grabbed his phone, clicked his Calm app and listened to three minutes of meditation.
The calm did not, in fact come from the app. It came from the Huskies. They are the order amid any chaos. Unselfish, efficient and precise, they withstood St. John’s valiant threats but only surrendered the lead for five minutes, using their dizzying extra passes to constantly make the Johnnies feel one step behind the action. UConn finished with 23 assists on 31 made field goals, scored 33 points from the arc and 38 in the paint to advance to the Huskies’ first Big East tournament final since 2011.
“This is one of the stops,’’ said Tristen Newtown, who finished with 25 points and an assist shy of a double-double. “Throughout the two years, we’ve been making a lot of history. So I guess tomorrow after the game, we’ll try to make more.’’
St. John’s returns to campus, but has, for the first time since 2019, a Selection Sunday to look forward to. The Johnnies don’t know who they’re playing next or where. They can, however, count on one thing. Tom O’Grady will be there.
(Photo of UConn’s Hassan Diarra: Mary Altaffer / AP)
