St. John’s groups to honor Carnesecca during games

NEW YORK– The guys’s and women’s basketball groups at St. John’s will wear “Lou” patches on their consistent jerseys for the rest of this season to honor Hall of Popularity coach Lou Carnesecca, who died Saturday at age 99.

A funeral mass at St. Thomas More Church on the university’s Queens school will be held Friday early morning, and the athletic department will host “A Homage to Coach Carnesecca” this weekend during males’s and ladies’s games at the arena that bears his name, St. John’s announced Tuesday.Led by coach Rick Pitino, the Red Storm men play Kansas State on Saturday as part of the Big 12-Big East Fight. The females’s squad faces Wake Forest on Sunday.Carnesecca’s reserved seat in Section 7, Row JJ, Seat

3, where he was often a component at games after retiring in 1992, will remain empty in his honor.Editor’s Picks Both games will be preceded by a video tribute to Carnesecca and a moment of silence inside the arena. A celebratory decal will be set up on the court, and St. John’s players will wear”526 “shooting shirts to mark his profession win total.The school also plans to salute his life and legacy with digital billboards on the Long Island Expressway, Whitestone Expressway and New Jersey Turnpike.The winningest

coach in the history of the guys’s program, Carnesecca went 526-200 in 24 seasons at St. John’s over 2 stints from 1965-92. He assisted the group to five Big East regular-season titles, 18 NCAA tournament appearances and the 1985 Final Four.St. John’s likewise will host Lou Carnesecca Day when the team plays Butler on school Jan. 4, a day before his 100th birthday.