Rick Pitino turned 73 last September. On Friday, he will coach in the 2026 Sweet 16 with a St. John’s team that hadn’t been there in 27 years. He leads three coaches over 70 still alive in the tournament, a generation of basketball lifers who have outlasted nearly every peer from their era.
Rick Pitino, 73, St. John’s
Pitino, born Sept. 18, 1952, is the oldest active coach in the 2026 NCAA Tournament. His No. 5-seed Red Storm won on a last-second shot to beat Kansas in the Round of 32, returning St. John’s to the Sweet 16 for the first time since 1999. Pitino has now taken teams to this stage of the tournament in five different decades, a feat matched only by Basketball Hall of Famers Mike Krzyzewski and Jim Boeheim, both of whom have since retired.
“I can be out of coaching next year. I’m 73,” Pitino said at a press conference during tournament week. “I want to coach this game like it’s the last game I’ll ever coach. I also appreciate the blessings I’ve been given by being allowed to coach this long.”
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His son Richard, the head coach at Xavier, told NBC News the family has no intention of pushing Pitino toward the exit. “After spending a week down there with him at the NCAA Tournament in San Diego, if he told me he was 55, I’d say he’s going to go for another 20 years. He’s loving it,” Richard Pitino said.
St. John’s meets No. 1 overall seed Duke on Friday at 7:10 p.m. ET on CBS in Washington, D.C.
Rick Barnes (71) and Tom Izzo (71)
Rick Barnes, born July 17, 1954, is 71 and leading Tennessee to its fourth consecutive Sweet 16. The No. 6-seed Volunteers upset No. 3-seed Virginia by seven points in the Round of 32 and now face No. 2 Iowa State in Chicago on Friday at 9:10 p.m. CT on TBS. Barnes has been coaching at the Division I level since 1987, cycling through multiple programs before arriving at Tennessee in 2015. He has built the Volunteers into one of the most reliable March programs in the SEC, reaching the Sweet 16 in four straight seasons.
Tom Izzo, born Jan. 30, 1955, is also 71 but the younger of the two by about six months. Izzo is in his 31st season as Michigan State’s head coach, having taken the job in 1995, and has guided the No. 3-seed Spartans to a Sweet 16 matchup against UConn on Friday at 9:45 p.m. ET on CBS.
He built Michigan State into one of the most consistent programs in the country over three decades and did it without relying heavily on the transfer portal, a choice that separates him from most coaches in the modern power-conference landscape.
Izzo has not won a national championship since 2000, but he has made the NCAA Tournament in the overwhelming majority of his seasons in East Lansing. His ability to sustain that level without the roster turnover that defines today’s game is what makes his continued presence in the Sweet 16 remarkable.
These three coaches share something beyond age. Pitino first walked a college sideline in 1978. Barnes got his first head coaching job in 1987. Izzo took over at Michigan State in 1995. The combined coaching experience across those three benches stretches past 100 years of Division I basketball, spanning the arrival of the three-point line, the explosion of player movement, and the NIL era that reshaped everything.
The coaches who couldn’t adapt retired or were pushed out. Pitino, Barnes and Izzo are still competing for Elite Eight spots on Friday night. That fact is the only explanation needed for why they’re still here.
