As with many other recent moments in his career, Rick Pitino's return to Louisville was marked by conflict.

The former University of Louisville basketball coach was torn between what he said was his desire for "closure" and the lingering bitterness from being fired in October amid a recruiting scandal.

Eventually, he said, the former won out.

“I’m not going to let a few people who have nothing to do with the University of Louisville spoil all my great memories of this place and the fans," he said.

Pitino was back in town Friday for a book signing and talk hosted by the Courier Journal, part of the USA TODAY Network.

Pitino had previously said he would not set foot in Louisville again until John Schnatter and David Grissom resigned from the board of trustees. Schnatter resigned in July after he used a racial slur on a conference call; Grissom remains as chairman of the board.

“Now that half is gone, I’ll stay a short period of time until the other one leaves," Pitino said. “I have so many friends in the Louisville area. Anytime you spend 16 years somewhere, not even David Grissom can spoil that.”

A line of about 400 people snaked around the second floor of the Omni Hotel in downtown Louisville on Friday, fans clad in red and blue intertwined like strands of DNA.

Pitino sat in a windowed room one block away from the KFC Yum Center, where for five months out of the year for the past 16 years he was king.

The people who approached him with books in hand seemed to still revere him as one, with many offering him statements of support and wearing 2013 NCAA championship gear.

He was gifted two letters and a stack of what looked to be postcards. He chatted with an older couple about a mutual acquaintance's recent surgery. One man wished him a happy early birthday, referring to Pitino's upcoming 66th birthday on Tuesday.

"Good to see you back in Louisville," a woman said.

"Good to be back," Pitino replied with a smile as he scrawled a marker across the title page.

Pitino had only been back for a few short hours before the book signing. He got off a plane and went immediately to speak to the Bellarmine University men's basketball team, part of his new initiative to serve as a consultant for college basketball programs. He planned Saturday to watch the Cincinnati Bearcats practice and speak with the team before flying back to Florida.

Pitino has repeatedly said he has no desire to coach college basketball again, and Friday revealed that two college programs had expressed doubt about his role in the FBI scandal.

"They said, ‘Why would Louisville fire a Hall of Fame coach if you were innocent of anything?’" Pitino said. "I have no response. I say, ‘Well the governor fired the board of trustees and brought in new people who weren’t close to the University of Louisville.’ You can say all of that and that’s nice vernacular but in essence the only way to clear it up is for the truth to come out. The book presents the truth, but that’s the beholder of the reader to decipher everything that’s in that book.”

Pitino will spend the next few weeks completing his book tour, after which he plans to produce a podcast about national college basketball. He said he will make a weekly "Run to the Final Four" list with teams he thinks are capable of getting to the national semifinals.

As for Louisville, Pitino said he thinks new coach Chris Mack has a team that will be "one of the more physical teams in the ACC, if not the country."

Although Pitino is gone, Mack and the University of Louisville will still be dealing with repercussions from the recruiting scandal for the foreseeable future as the FBI completes its investigation and Pitino continues his wrongful termination lawsuit against the athletic association.

Pitino said Friday he does not believe the NCAA should punish Louisville, although he fears that athletic association lawyers, in order to prove the school had just cause to fire him, are also unintentionally implicating the university in the scheme.

Pitino said he advised Mack to take the Louisville job with a "clear conscience."

“He’ll do a fabulous job. He’s a great young coach," Pitino said. "I have nothing but the utmost respect for his ability as a coach, as a teacher. It’ll be a different style of play, and one that will bring a winner right away."

Here are more highlights from the Courier Journal's interview with Pitino at the Omni: