In the end, family reasons prevented Rick Pitino from returning to the sidelines at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center.

The Providence Journal / Gretchen Ertl

When Providence College went searching for a new basketball coach last April, Rick Pitino seriously weighed a return to the Ocean State.

“I did give it some thought. I’ll be honest, yes I did, but it’s the only place that I ever would have thought about,” Pitino said last week.

Pitino was one of several coaches that PC athletic director Bob Driscoll spoke to in a month-long quest to replace Tim Welsh. Pitino’s name was mentioned in passing during the search but few observers considered the possibility of the potential Hall of Fame coach leaving the University of Louisville to coach for a second time at Providence as sincere.

Neither Pitino nor Driscoll chose to discuss the courtship at the time but they both admitted this week that their discussions were substantial.

“We talked, he had interest, and it ultimately didn’t work out,” said Driscoll, who refused to further discuss his talks with Pitino.

When approached at the Big East’s media day in New York last Wednesday, Pitino at first played down the discussions he had about returning to a position he held from 1985-87. The Friars’ improbable run to the 1987 Final Four first catapulted Pitino’s name to the top of the coaching world and enabled him to move on and become the coach of the New York Knicks.

“I’m a financial contributor to Providence College, a fan of Providence and a very big fan of (school president) Father Shanley’s and Bob Driscoll,” Pitino said. “My son’s a graduate, my daughter is probably going to end up going to school there, so I was trying to help with the search.”

When pressed, however, Pitino admitted that the possibility of returning to PC was something he felt he had to consider.

“If there’s any place, and I say this at this period in my life, there’s no pro team that I would ever consider coaching again and there is no other college team I would ever consider coaching again. The only team I would have wanted to coach, but now it’s over, is Providence College,” he said. “For a number of reasons I could not do it. My son is going to have a baby, I’m going to be a grandfather. He moved to Kentucky to be with the family and he could not move again. It’s more of a family situation. I love Louisville and love the state. We’re happy here.”

Pitino said he’s more than happy to end his coaching career at Louisville where he’s beginning his eighth season and earns a reported $2.5 million a year, plus a retention bonus. The Cardinals advanced to the Final Four in 2005 and to the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Tournament last March. This season’s Louisville team is seen as a national title contender by most experts.

PC’s Driscoll caught public heat during a long, often confusing search that ultimately ended with the hiring of Keno Davis but it’s clear the search took many twists and turns as the athletic director looked to make a big splash. He says now that he’s “thrilled” that Davis is his new coach.

“We’re thrilled that we were able to get Keno to come,” Driscoll said. “We think we have a very bright future with Keno Davis as our coach.”

Pitino said he’s met Davis and believes the timing was more appropriate for the Friars to hire one of basketball’s hot, young coaches and not himself.

“In hindsight, I made the right move by staying and they made the right move by hiring Keno,” Pitino said. “Sometimes you always want to recapture Cinderella and it doesn’t always happen. They say you can never go back. It’s not always the case but you’re trying to sometimes chase a ghost and you can’t do it. This young man coming in is the perfect hire because there’s no past. Only the future.”

After firing Tim Welsh after 10 seasons, PC originally targeted George Mason coach Jim Larranaga. He turned down his alma mater and then Driscoll left to interview more candidates at the Final Four in San Antonio. For more than a week no other candidate publicly emerged in the search, but it is now clear that Pitino met with Driscoll on more than one occasion in Texas and that he became the focus of the search for several days. Driscoll also interviewed other coaches at that time, including ex-Brown coach Craig Robinson, current Bryant coach Tim O’Shea and ESPN commentator Fran Fraschilla.

Driscoll was particularly impressed with Robinson, who is the brother-in-law of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, but the Brown coach had also established contact with Oregon State sometime the same weekend. While the Friars resolved their discussions with Pitino, Robinson’s negotiations with OSU intensified to the point where he was offered the job. By the time Pitino pulled out of the PC talks, Robinson was traveling to Oregon. Instead of waiting any longer to see if PC would intensify talks with him, Robinson chose to ink a six-year, $5-million deal with Oregon State.

Driscoll eventually moved on and contacted UMass coach Travis Ford, who played for Pitino at Kentucky in the mid-1990s. Ford visited Providence and toured the campus and state with school officials but ultimately turned down an offer to become the next coach because he claimed he wanted to stay at UMass. Three weeks later, Ford jumped at a chance to move to Oklahoma State, where he signed a seven-year, $9-million contract.

Once Ford left PC empty handed, Driscoll contacted Davis, who had led Drake to its best season ever in his first season as a head coach. Davis won numerous National Coach of the Year awards for his work with the Bulldogs and he quickly expressed interest in a move to the Big East. Both Driscoll and Father Shanley trumpeted his hiring last April 15, with the president calling the new coach “the answer to our prayers.”

kmcnamar@projo.com