"The Looie" Men's Division I Coach of the Year

"THE LOOIE"

LOU CARNESECCA • All-Met Men's Division I Coach of the Year namesake

 

“The Looie,” to be given to the MBWA men’s Coach of the Year, previously was named in memory of Peter Carlesimo. 

The newly named award will be presented at the 92nd MBWA All-Met Haggerty Awards dinner scheduled Thursday, April 24, at the Sleepy Hollow Hotel & Conference Center in Tarrytown, NY. The Haggerty dinner is the longest running, media-managed college basketball awards program in the United States.
 
The usually soft-spoken but sometimes excitable St. John’s coach, whose outlandish sweaters became an emblem of his team’s Final Four run in 1985, died at 99 this past Nov. 30, a few weeks shy of his 100th birthday. The university in a statement said the Hall of Fame coach “endeared himself to generations of New Yorkers with his wit and warmth.”
 
Born Luigi P. Carnesecca on Jan. 5, 1925, the son of Italian immigrants, he grew up in East Harlem in Manhattan. After a stretch in the Coast Guard during World War II, he became the coach at his high school, the former St. Ann’s Academy now known as Archbishop Molloy. In 1958, he took an assistant’s job in basketball under Joe Lapchick at St. John’s, his alma mater, where he had played baseball on a team that reached the 1949 College World Series.
 
As head coach of the now nicknamed Red Storm, Carnesecca produced a record of 526 wins and 200 losses (.725 W-L pct) over 24 seasons (1965–70, 1973–92), taking a break for three seasons to coach the ABA New York Nets. In November 2004, St. John's University officially dedicated and renamed its historic Alumni Hall as Carnesecca Arena.