Reusse: In three short years, Pitino has turned the Gophers into a joke

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per Pat:

In the spring of 2013, Pitino took over a team that handily had beaten Shabazz Muhammad, Kyle Anderson and UCLA in the first round of the NCAA tournament. In three short years, Pitino has turned the Gophers into a joke … a team destined to be in the fight for 14th in the Big Ten.

There was a lively crowd for Michigan State on Saturday, allegedly, but that's not likely to be repeated more than a couple of more times this winter at Williams Arena. And it came after a December when actual crowds of 4,000-5,000 were routine for the usual litany of nobodies for home games.

The difference this time, in Season 3 of the coach with the famous surname, is that the Gophers lost to the nobodies. They had a 47-game winning streak vs. nonconference opponents in the Barn, and then came a four-game home stretch with a victory over Chicago State and losses to South Dakota (two overtimes), South Dakota State (mismatch) and Milwaukee (mismatch).

Do we have no shame remaining in men's athletics at the University of Minnesota?

The football team lays the grotesque, giant egg of a 5-7 season, suffers the humiliation of going to a bowl game in Detroit, and the followers are asked to celebrate a seven-point victory over Central Michigan in front of a crowd that did not equal your average Eden Prairie home game.

And now the Little Richards lose to South Dakota and South Dakota State in a 72-hour period, you wait around to get beat by Penn State with its wretched basketball tradition, and you want us to talk about Amir Coffey at Hopkins High School.

The Gophers were No. 34 in RPI before the start of the 2013 NCAA tournament. Tubby Smith was fired, Richard Pitino was hired and on Wednesday, the Gophers were rated No. 186 in RPI.

Foul by foul, coach. Keep building. We're proud of you.

http://www.startribune.com/patience-wanes-for-gophers-men-s-basketball-and-wolves/364464331/

Go Gophers!!
 

Ouch.

Northwestern the 2nd in a 3-game stretch of "winnable" games. Nebraska follows the Wildcats. This is not a stretch in which to go 0-3.
 

SelectionSunday said:
Ouch. Northwestern the 2nd in a 3-game stretch of "winnable" games. Nebraska follows the Wildcats. This is not a stretch in which to go 0-3.
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Agreed. Gophers could really use two straight wins here.
 

Patrick will be Patrick. A jerk like him is not going to let anything, including perspective or facts, get in the way of a good ripping. A story like that is so easy to write- what a waste of otherwise good writing talent. Reusse is just plain lazy.
 

He couldn't have said it any better.

But doesn't he know Coach just needs more time?
 


this is just what we need another thread of repeating the same ****.

Can we please win a game to shut 3/4th this board up for a week.
 

BleedGopher said:
per Pat:
Do we have no shame remaining in men's athletics at the University of Minnesota?
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I've been wondering the same thing, and not just regarding football and basketball. Our only ranking is in gymnastics, a sport where there are so few programs they don't even do a top 25
 

GopherOhana said:
I've been wondering the same thing, and not just regarding football and basketball. Our only ranking is in gymnastics, a sport where there are so few programs they don't even do a top 25
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Thank God for the women's sports!
 

bga1 said:
Patrick will be Patrick. A jerk like him is not going to let anything, including perspective or facts, get in the way of a good ripping. A story like that is so easy to write- what a waste of otherwise good writing talent. Reusse is just plain lazy.
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What facts did Patrick get incorrect in this story?

Honestly not trying to start something as we're all clear where I stand (HA!) but I'm honestly curious about what he has incorrect.
 



bga1 said:
Patrick will be Patrick. A jerk like him is not going to let anything, including perspective or facts, get in the way of a good ripping. A story like that is so easy to write- what a waste of otherwise good writing talent. Reusse is just plain lazy.
Click to expand...

Agreed. This doesn't read like a serious column; it's almost a writing exercise to see how bad you can make things look with words. It completely lacks perspective, context and details. A critical column is not uncalled for at this point, but it could have been much better than this.

I will give Pat one thing, though. He does evoke something that doesn't get talked about a lot but is interesting and curious: as much of a hockey state as we are, hockey is practically absent in the southwestern quarter of the state. I found that out when I traveled south 100 miles for my first two years of college - at the Morris campus of the U of M. When I found out there was no HS hockey team and the only place to go skating was a third-rate outdoor rink, I was flabbergasted. Somewhere on that 100-mile journey I crossed what I started to call the hockey line. In fact, I've always meant to take out a map and actually plot the hockey line based on who has and doesn't have high school teams, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
 


Never the less, we need some positives for the program soon or the better players who will be returning will be looking over the fence at better situations.

We have to show some success!
 

bga1 said:
Patrick will be Patrick. A jerk like him is not going to let anything, including perspective or facts, get in the way of a good ripping. A story like that is so easy to write- what a waste of otherwise good writing talent. Reusse is just plain lazy.
Click to expand...

There was nothing factually inaccurate about what Patrick wrote. There were no glaring omissions either. His perspective was reasonable, as Pitino's only modicum of success was with Tubby's players and Walker and Hollins regressed in their second year in the system. I don't think that Patrick should call Pitino "Little Richard" and I would quibble with him on the number of bodies in Williams during preseason games. (I'd guess 6k-7k, but maybe 4k-5k paid.) This is now worse than Monson in my opinion. The distinctions are that Pitino handles the media quite well (pretty articulate and forthright in interviews), which is important, and it appears that he has legit talent coming in. He should be given one more year.
 



GopherOhana said:
I've been wondering the same thing, and not just regarding football and basketball. Our only ranking is in gymnastics, a sport where there are so few programs they don't even do a top 25
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Women's volleyball?
 


Sometimes I really hate the media....Negative, Negative, negative.

This season was going to be bad.....last years team was more disappointing than this one, by far.
 

Gopher2017 said:
What facts did Patrick get incorrect in this story?

Honestly not trying to start something as we're all clear where I stand (HA!) but I'm honestly curious about what he has incorrect.
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This is comment is like when a chick starts a sentence with not trying to be a bitch
 

jamiche said:
There was nothing factually inaccurate about what Patrick wrote. There were no glaring omissions either. His perspective was reasonable, as Pitino's only modicum of success was with Tubby's players and Walker and Hollins regressed in their second year in the system. I don't think that Patrick should call Pitino "Little Richard" and I would quibble with him on the number of bodies in Williams during preseason games. (I'd guess 6k-7k, but maybe 4k-5k paid.) This is now worse than Monson in my opinion. The distinctions are that Pitino handles the media quite well (pretty articulate and forthright in interviews), which is important, and it appears that he has legit talent coming in. He should be given one more year.
Click to expand...
Not that the NIT is a glorious accomplishment, but out of the 12 scholarship players to start the season on that team, Pitino brought in four them, including two starters and the sixth man. Now that everyone hates Pitino were changing the narrative and saying it was all Tubby's guys?
 

Gopher2017 said:
What facts did Patrick get incorrect in this story?

Honestly not trying to start something as we're all clear where I stand (HA!) but I'm honestly curious about what he has incorrect.
Click to expand...

There are two narratives the fat and lazy sports writer could have chosen. 1. Pitino is rebuilding with young promising players and has more to come- but the suffering will occur often this year. That would be a positive approach 2. Pitino sucks at everything and has ruined our fabled basketball program. That would be the negative approach. The easy approach. That's the one he chose.
 

scher215 said:
Women's volleyball?
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PR's comment was with respect to mens athletics. is there a mens sport doing better this year than previous years? hockey, wrestling and swimming appear to be in decline. Basketball this year feels like football Kill's first year, just awful.
 


jamiche said:
There was nothing factually inaccurate about what Patrick wrote. There were no glaring omissions either.
Click to expand...

BleedGopher said:
In the spring of 2013, Pitino took over a team that handily had beaten Shabazz Muhammad, Kyle Anderson and UCLA in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
Click to expand...

Three of the five starters from the UCLA game weren't on the team in 2013-14. Not glaring at all.

(And it was the second round of the NCAA Tournament...unless they changed it retroactivally)
 


Gopherbbdude said:
Sometimes I really hate the media....Negative, Negative, negative.

This season was going to be bad.....last years team was more disappointing than this one, by far.
Click to expand...

I'm glad I'm not the only one that feels this way. But I do want to see them start to win a few games that they can win. I'm not expecting a real high bar yet but you can't lose them all.

It is unfortunate that the make-up of the roster almost dictated that year three would be year one. That seems like a very convenient excuse, but it is at least partially factual. You can't tank you way to better draft picks in college or just clean house when you arrive and fill the roster with April recruits. To some extent Pitino was blessed or cursed to have the players he inherited.
 

Hired by The Handsy Athletic Director. I believe a change needed to be made from Tubby; Pitino was a mistake.
 

Bad Gopher said:
I will give Pat one thing, though. He does evoke something that doesn't get talked about a lot but is interesting and curious: as much of a hockey state as we are, hockey is practically absent in the southwestern quarter of the state. I found that out when I traveled south 100 miles for my first two years of college - at the Morris campus of the U of M. When I found out there was no HS hockey team and the only place to go skating was a third-rate outdoor rink, I was flabbergasted. Somewhere on that 100-mile journey I crossed what I started to call the hockey line. In fact, I've always meant to take out a map and actually plot the hockey line based on who has and doesn't have high school teams, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Click to expand...

I strongly related to that part of the piece, too. I grew up in a fairly poor and rural part of the east. No one played hockey because 1) it wasn't cold enough for long enough to do it outside and 2) there were neither the resources nor the demand to build indoor facilities. In high school we sometimes played street hockey but that's about it. So, like Ruesse, I never really became a hockey fan. Like him, I only watch basketball in the winter and if my preferred teams are bad, I really don't have the enthusiasm for watching a different sport.
 

bga1 said:
There are two narratives the fat and lazy sports writer could have chosen. 1. Pitino is rebuilding with young promising players and has more to come- but the suffering will occur often this year. That would be a positive approach 2. Pitino sucks at everything and has ruined our fabled basketball program. That would be the negative approach. The easy approach. That's the one he chose.
Click to expand...

Feel free and submit your resume to the paper. I'm sure they will jump at the chance to hire you, I mean you clearly seem to have it figured out and know how to do a better job than Reusse.
 

GopherGod said:
Feel free and submit your resume to the paper. I'm sure they will jump at the chance to hire you, I mean you clearly seem to have it figured out and know how to do a better job than Reusse.
Click to expand...

It's not that hard to troll people for clicks, especially in this state, heck you can have pick a day of the week depending on how many colums you write? Viqueen Monday, Timberwoo Tuesday, Wild Wednesday, Twins Thursday, Gopher Friday. For the weekend write your cheesy town ball or MIAC feel good column to prove you're not a complete asshole and boom your a successful Strib writer.
 



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