Remembering Lou Carnesecca, John Thompson and the legendary 'sweater game'

Lou Carnesecca liked to wear sweaters. He had no idea what he was creating when he grabbed one before a basketball game in early 1985.

Carnesecca, who died Nov. 30 at 99, had 526 wins at St. John’s University. He will be remembered at his funeral Friday, and long thereafter, as a Hall of Fame coach and a loving husband, father, uncle, grandfather and friend.

To many sports fans, he will also be remembered, at least in part, for his "lucky sweater." It was brown with "V" shapes across the front, a gift from an Italian Olympic team coach. It happened to be in his closet when he was leaving for an away game.

According to the New York Post, his wife, Mary, suggested he bring a sweater on a road trip to Pittsburgh; she was worried the arena would be drafty. Carnesecca had a bad cough.

He wore it during the game, despite needling from his players, and the team won. Carnesecca kept wearing it. He had it on when, behind clutch play from his star player, Chris Mullin, St. John's upset top-ranked Georgetown on the road.

The win set up a No. 1 (St. John’s) vs. No. 2 (Georgetown) dream matchup on Feb. 27, 1985, in New York at the height of the Big East Conference’s power.

St. John’s had a winning streak that had hit 19. Carnesecca was still wearing the sweater.

"That’s all I am is a sweater guy," Carnesecca said in a documentary about the game. "I thought I was a great tactician, great strategist. You guys just think the sweater won all the games."

John Thompson, Georgetown’s Hall of Fame coach, decided he would try and one-up his on-court rival (and close friend off of it) by donning the same sweater.

Or did he?

Thompson wanted a sweater just like Carnesecca’s. He said in the documentary he sent a former player who lived in New York by subway to St. John’s campus in Queens to find one.

A few days after Thompson died in August 2020, this is how Mike Riley, his longtime assistant coach, recalled the situation unfolding: "Somebody called him back. Somebody that knew somebody that knew somebody else, and they said they could get him a duplicate of it. … And (Thompson) said he’d need it in, obviously, Triple-XL.

“And it wasn’t a sweater," Riley told USA TODAY Sports. "It winds up being like a T-shirt. Now how they did that I have no idea. But coach gets this T-shirt, he puts it on in the locker room and then he comes out."

The towering presence of Thompson, a 6-foot-10 former collegiate and NBA center, drew attention at any game he coached. Now imagine him appearing, his trademark white towel draped across his shoulder, in front of more than 19,500 fans at Madison Square Garden.

"If you ever see the video of it, he's walking around, and he’s actually got his arms folded because he doesn’t want to let anybody see it with his jacket kind of closed," Riley says, "and he’s got the towel trying to help him to cover it.

"He’s walking back and forth and walking back and forth and it’s right near the time where the game is getting ready to start."

Thompson had his sport jacket buttoned, too.

"He goes down to Looie, opens up his jacket and the place goes crazy," Riley says.

Rich Chvotkin, who was broadcasting the game for local television in Washington, D.C., with Bernie Smilovitz, remembers doing his opening and then turning around to see Thompson open the coat.

"The whole atmosphere of the tension of that place just was kind of lifted," says Chvotkin, who still broadcasts Hoyas games today. "Like a camaraderie between Carnesecca and Thompson, as opposed to a tremendous adversarial relationship because he kind of likened himself to Looie."

Carnesecca laughed, then Thompson turned to play to the crowd, revealing the replica of the sweater and a wide grin on his face.

"I’m saying to myself, ‘That sweater ain’t lucky. Look, I got one, too,’ " Thompson said in the documentary.

The Hoyas, the defending national champions, won 85-69 behind 20 points from star Patrick Ewing. They wouldn’t lose again until they fell 66-64 to Villanova in the title game.

They beat St. John’s two more times along the way, in the Big East championship and NCAA Final Four. At the Big East tournament, Carnesecca came out with a string of towels hanging over his shoulder and dragging on the floor as he walked toward Thompson.

It was all part of the friendly gamesmanship between the two coaches that could get chippy when the game began.

"When they played, they had six guys, as opposed to five, because Looie stood on the court all of the time," Thompson said, "and because of the fact that he was short, nobody ever saw him. And I used to get on the referees all the time because the minute I crossed that line, they could see me. I said, ‘There he is. He’s there and is he a defensive man, too?’ "

Thompson got along with other iconic coaches in the league – Villanova’s Rollie Massimino, Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim, Seton Hall’s P.J. Carlesimo – but Riley said Thompson had a special affection for Carnesecca because "Looie was Looie."

Carnesecca, who was more than a foot shorter, and Thompson were natural foils for one another. But the two were more similar than perhaps many realized. Both could be salty on the court, but when you met them off it, they were different.

"Coach was always kind to people, especially young children and older people," Riley says of Thompson. "Always stopped for young people and for older people. He would always give them time. He would greet them because they were expecting what they saw on TV: Him growling at somebody or fussing about something. He said, ‘Well, that’s not me. That’s the perception of what people think of me. That is when I’m working, when I’m going into my job and what you guys write about me sometimes. I think when people see that, that’s what they expect.’ "

Sometimes perceptions, like pieces of clothing, don’t reveal the full picture. To get it, you just had to move a little closer.

"You never just went out to St. John’s to interview Looie Carnesecca," New York columnist Mike Lupica wrote on social media when Carnesecca died. "You went to the house, and Mary would cook and the stories would begin and before long it didn’t matter what you’d come to talk about. One of the dear men in the history of sports. He made us all feel like family."

(This story was updated to add new information.)

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Lou Carnesecca, John Thompson sweater game: An iconic moment