Lou Carnesecca, the Corridor of Fame coach who took St. John’s College to nationwide basketball prominence and who was recognized for his fast wit and colourful courtside persona, died on Saturday. He was 99.
His dying was confirmed by Brian Browne, a spokesman for the college, who offered no different particulars.
When Carnesecca took over because the St. John’s head coach in 1965, the college, whereas wealthy in basketball custom, performed as an impartial. It had begun a gradual transfer to the Jamaica part of Queens from the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn 10 years earlier, and its Alumni Corridor athletic constructing was solely 4 years previous.
With the founding of the Large East Convention in 1979, St. John’s started competing frequently in opposition to main basketball applications.
Carnesecca took St. John’s to 18 N.C.A.A. championship tournaments and 6 N.I.T. tournaments, together with the 1989 championship, and his groups gained the Large East match championship in 1983 and 1986.
St. John’s gained 526 video games whereas shedding 200 in Carnesecca’s two stints there, from 1965 to 1970 after which, after his three seasons teaching the New York (now Brooklyn) Nets within the previous American Basketball Affiliation, from 1973 to 1992.
St. John’s was ranked No. 1 within the two main nationwide polls for 5 consecutive weeks late within the 1984-85 season. Led by the all-American Chris Mullin (a future St. John’s coach), Mark Jackson, Walter Berry and Invoice Wennington — all New Yorkers apart from Wennington, who was from Montreal — St. John’s reached the N.C.A.A. match’s Last 4 that season earlier than falling to Georgetown within the semifinals.
Halfway by the season, Carnesecca caught a chilly, and his spouse, Mary, steered that he put on a sweater for his subsequent sport. He went by his closet and picked out a garish darkish brown one with massive crimson and blue chevrons throughout the entrance, a present he had acquired just a few years earlier from a visiting Italian coach.
He wore the sweater by a chronic successful streak, although as Carnesecca remarked to reporters at one level, “It’s ugly, isn’t it.”
Followers despatched him sweaters after that, and Carnesecca started carrying them frequently at courtside whereas roaming the sidelines, dancing up and down as he exhorted his gamers to higher feats.
Carnesecca, recognized to simply about everybody as Looie, spent hours watching sport movies at his residence, although he wasn’t at all times probably the most organized at occasions, as a former St. John’s coach, Lou DelCollo, instructed it.
“You’d decide up the reel that was labeled as the primary half of the Georgetown sport, put it on the projector and discover out it was the second half of the Windfall sport,” DelCollo instructed The Los Angeles Occasions in 1985.
Though Carnesecca by no means gained an N.C.A.A. championship, the longtime Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was extremely impressed. “In sports activities you’re typically judged by what you haven’t performed,” he instructed The Atlanta Journal and Structure in 1991. “However what Louie has performed is simply unimaginable.”
Carnesecca was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame in Springfield, Mass., in 1992.
Luigi Carnesecca was born on Jan. 5, 1925, in Manhattan, the one youngster of Alfredo and Adele Carnesecca, Italian immigrants who owned an East Harlem delicatessen. He attended St. Ann’s Academy in Manhattan (now Archbishop Molloy Excessive College in Queens), sitting on the bench as a basketball scrub, however he did expertise an exciting second on the previous Madison Sq. Backyard on Eighth Avenue.
“I used to be a horrible participant,” he as soon as instructed George Vecsey of The New York Occasions. “However I at all times needed to be a coach. I used to be teaching little children within the neighborhood, in order that they put me on the crew at St. Ann’s, however I by no means performed.”
He added: “This was within the days after we performed highschool video games within the Backyard, and we have been up by 40 factors in opposition to St. Simon Inventory, and the coach put me in, Dave Tobey, God relaxation his soul.
“I used to be good sufficient to not take the ball out of bounds, as a result of, hah, I knew I might by no means get it again, so I received the ball and as quickly as I cross the 10-second line, I let it fly. I didn’t even hit the rim or the backboard. The coach simply took me proper out of the sport, and that was it.”
After service within the Pacific with the Coast Guard throughout World Struggle II, Carnesecca enrolled at St. John’s, the place he received into three video games as a junior varsity basketball participant and performed the infield for the baseball crew.
Following his commencement in 1950, he coached basketball and baseball at St. Ann’s. He returned to St. John’s in 1957 as an assistant basketball coach underneath Joe Lapchick, the previous Knicks coach, and was succeeded in his highschool posts by Jack Curran, who coached at Archbishop Molloy for 55 years.
Carnesecca was named head coach at St. John’s when Lapchick retired.
He gained his one centesimal sport in 1970, then left St. John’s for a profitable contract as normal supervisor and coach of the Nets. His groups made the A.B.A. playoffs in every of his seasons and reached the league finals in 1972, shedding to the Indiana Pacers. He had an general document of 114-138 with the Nets.
Carnesecca grew weary of the professional basketball grind. “It’s fairly laborious to present the identical halftime discuss 118 occasions a yr,” he mentioned whereas asserting his retirement as St. John’s coach in April 1992.
St. John’s renamed Alumni Corridor as Lou Carnesecca Enviornment in November 2004. When Mullin was launched by Carnesecca at his personal Corridor of Fame induction in 2011, he mentioned, “I selected the most effective coach in the most effective metropolis.”
Following his teaching years, Carnesecca grew to become a particular assistant to the St. John’s president, working in neighborhood relations.
St. John’s mentioned in a press release that Carnesecca is survived by his spouse of 73 years, Mary (Chiesa) Carnesecca; a daughter, Enes Carnesecca; a granddaughter, Ieva; a niece, Susan Chiesa; and a nephew, John Chiesa.
In January 2001, Madison Sq. Backyard raised a crimson and white banner emblazoned “526,” for Carnesecca’s 526 profession victories in 24 seasons at St. John’s.
“I’d be lower than sincere if I mentioned I wasn’t thrilled,” he instructed The Occasions days earlier than the ceremony, reflecting on how a boy raised by immigrant mother and father who ran a deli had succeeded in big-time sports activities. “I may have been slicing salami.”
Mike Ives contributed reporting.