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G. Paul Burnett

Lou Carnesecca was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 1992, making him one of dozens of college coaches honored. His numbers during 24 years at St. John’s made him an easy choice.

But Carnesecca, who died Saturday about a month shy of turning 100, was one of one in a category that had nothing to do with wins and losses. He was, to one and all, “Looie,” a unique icon in the basketball pantheon. The only person who didn’t call him “Looie” was his good friend and fellow Hall of Famer John Thompson, who called him “Motherf---ing Looie,” a term of endearment Thompson used on a handful of people he liked and respected most.

Thompson was involved in one of Looie’s most memorable moments, the night he showed up in Madison Square Garden wearing an identical garish sweater to the one that had become Carnesecca’s good-luck charm that season. St. John’s and Georgetown were ranked first and second that night, a tribute to the 1980s dominance of the Big East.

At the end of that 1985 season, the Big East had three teams reach the Final Four — St. John’s joined Villanova, which stunned Georgetown in the national championship game. The (then) Redmen were blown out in the semifinals by the Patrick Ewing-led Hoyas, but their trip to that Final Four probably clinched Carnesecca’s status as a Hall of Famer.

That St. John’s team was led by Chris Mullin and Walter Berry, and it beat North Carolina State in the West Region final to earn its trip to Lexington, Kentucky, for the season’s final weekend. Jim Valvano was N.C. State’s coach at the time, and he had blunt words to say about Carnesecca several years after the game.

“I thought we had ’em,” he said. “There was a TV timeout with 12 minutes left … and I said to my guys, ‘Just keep doing what you’re doing for 12 more minutes and we’re going to Lexington.’ Except that motherf---ing Looie changed his offense, got the ball to Mullin or Berry every possession and beat us like a drum down the stretch. There weren’t many times during my career I walked off after a game knowing I had been outcoached, but that was one of them.”

That was the thing about Looie: He was charming and funny, and then, when it mattered, he would beat you like a drum. He never had a losing season at St. John’s; his worst record was 17-12. He reached the NCAA tournament 18 times and the NIT — back when it mattered — six times. In all, he was 526-200, with his two stints interrupted for three years when he left to coach the New York Nets. He took the Nets to the ABA Finals in 1972 — two seasons before the Nets traded for Julius Erving.

I grew up on Carnesecca’s early St. John’s teams, and when I got the chance to meet him as a reporter, I wondered whether the charm I had seen from afar would be the same up close.

It was — and more. I once went to cover a St. John’s early-season tournament — named for Looie’s predecessor, Joe Lapchick — in what is now Carnesecca Arena, largely because one of the visiting teams was ranked, meaning I had a chance to see two ranked teams <i>and</i> talk with Looie.

On opening night, after a fairly easy win, I was invited back to the great man’s office.

“So I hear you’re from New York,” Looie said as we sat down.

I told him I had grown up watching his teams play. “You know the best team to come out of New York in those days,” he said. “Columbia, 1968. [Jim] McMillian, [Heyward] Dotson, [Dave] Newmark. They kicked our butt in the Holiday Festival. Could have made it to the Final Four.”

That Columbia team lost in overtime to a Lefty Driesell-coached Davidson team in the Sweet 16 that season. Its “butt-kicking” of St. John’s was by 60-55.

That was Looie’s way: Talk up his players but talk down himself. (Sort of the opposite of Rick Pitino, the current St. John’s coach.) That was why everyone loved Looie. Behind closed doors, he could be as tough as anyone. Out in public, he was Lovable Looie.

Mark Lennihan

He is one of the iconic Big East coaches who launched the league: Looie, Thompson, Jim Boeheim at Syracuse, Rollie Massimino at Villanova and — later — P.J. Carlesimo at Seton Hall, Jim Calhoun at Connecticut and Pitino at Providence. All took teams to the Final Four in the 1980s — except for Calhoun, who reached the Elite Eight in 1990 and went on to win three national championships.

The Big East was so rough in those halcyon days that the league spent several years allowing six fouls per player to try to keep star players on the court. But when the coaches got together in the offseason, it was an ongoing party, filled with laughter and swapping stories.

“We absolutely hated each other — except for P.J.,” Massimino once said. “But when we were together, it was like a summer camp reunion. The only thing Looie and I ever disagreed on was who had the better Italian food — New York or Philadelphia.”

Sadly, Massimino and Thompson aren’t around to tell Looie stories this week. But the rest of them are and no doubt will.

Here’s mine. I was in the St. John’s locker room after Georgetown had blown Looie’s team away in the national semifinals during that historic 1985 season. Looie motioned over and whispered in my ear: “You know what the good news is about this? Maybe that you-know-what” — he never used the actual profanity — “will stop telling people I’m a better coach than he is. Because I’m not.”

Thompson never stopped singing the praises of “Motherf---ing Looie.” And neither did anyone else.

John Feinstein is a Post contributor who also writes for Golf Digest, Golf World and does TV color on college basketball games.

John Feinstein

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Lou Carnesecca dies; St. John’s coach was a Hall of Famer in every way

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