Lou Carnesecca paved a legacy far beyond the St. John’s sidelines

The phone buzzed in the waiting room of a doctor’s office, where buzzing phones are treated more harshly than germs, but there wasn’t a choice here. On the face of the phone was a name — “Lou Carnesecca” — and these were calls that always had to be answered.

“Coach!” I said.

“I saw where you wrote about that white suit that Rick Pitino wore yesterday at the Garden,” he said, in that most familiar, raspy voice, and even over the phone you could detect the twinkle in his eye. “And that his wife told him to wear it. And I saw where you mentioned that it was my wife, Mary, who told me to wear that awful old sweater that made me famous.”

“She told me that story once,” I said. “She said you had a cold, and she wanted to keep you from getting pneumonia.”