Ezra: Firing Richard Pitino is Looking Like a Massive Mistake by Minnesota

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Still too early to say the ship has arrived on Ben Johnson for me.

He has beaten up on a bunch of horrible teams this year and lost to three of the four with a pulse. One very good half against Nebraska. Maybe he has turned a corner, but don't we need to see a little more? I feel like the board had a similar overreaction to the Michigan game in year one and the Ohio State game in year two. Let's see if he can start stacking conference wins, not wins against IUPUI.

On Pitino.....very few years in his tenure did we not have the belief we had the ability to be a tournament team. The results weren't as good as the sum of the parts/players in many cases. But we were never hoping the ceiling was one NIT bid in three years.

The grade on year three is incomplete. The wait for the conclusion of the embarrassing non-conference schedule is almost over.
 

golfing18now said:
Still too early to say the ship has arrived on Ben Johnson for me.

He has beaten up on a bunch of horrible teams this year and lost to three of the four with a pulse. One very good half against Nebraska. Maybe he has turned a corner, but don't we need to see a little more? I feel like the board had a similar overreaction to the Michigan game in year one and the Ohio State game in year two. Let's see if he can start stacking conference wins, not wins against IUPUI.

On Pitino.....very few years in his tenure did we not have the belief we had the ability to be a tournament team. The results weren't as good as the sum of the parts/players in many cases. But we were never hoping the ceiling was one NIT bid in three years.

The grade on year three is incomplete. The wait for the conclusion of the embarrassing non-conference schedule is almost over.
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I too long for the days of Pitino. Take me back :love:

Sorry what was the high-water mark of the 1st 3 Pitino years? Was it the NIT championship (where players couldn't transfer without sitting a year) or was it the 6 or 2 win conference seasons?
 
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golfing18now said:
Still too early to say the ship has arrived on Ben Johnson for me.

He has beaten up on a bunch of horrible teams this year and lost to three of the four with a pulse. One very good half against Nebraska. Maybe he has turned a corner, but don't we need to see a little more? I feel like the board had a similar overreaction to the Michigan game in year one and the Ohio State game in year two. Let's see if he can start stacking conference wins, not wins against IUPUI.

On Pitino.....very few years in his tenure did we not have the belief we had the ability to be a tournament team. The results weren't as good as the sum of the parts/players in many cases. But we were never hoping the ceiling was one NIT bid in three years.

The grade on year three is incomplete. The wait for the conclusion of the embarrassing non-conference schedule is almost over.
Click to expand...
Where are you seeing this overreaction to what has happened so far this season? We definitely need to see more and Johnson is far from out of the woods. There has been definite improvement from last year and there are finally some reasons for hope about the future of the program.

But the real season gets going after the first of the year and this team has to show it can hang with the rest of the conference and dig its way out of the cellar.
 

Pitino is far better than Johnson and staff but it was time to move on, he had not been able to secure a true winning BIG season and underperformed with some of his teams imo .......now idk where we go from here....
 


Johnnyboy18 said:
I too long for the days of Pitino. Take me back :love:

Sorry what was the high-water mark of the 1st 3 Pitino years? Was it the NIT championship (where players couldn't transfer without sitting a year) or was it the 6 or 2 win conference seasons?
Click to expand...

I'm not necessarily trying to make an overall comparison between Pitino and Johnson, nor am I making a prediction on how this year will play out. Pitino's second year looked like a tournament team in the non-conference, particularly coming off an NIT championship in year one. That year ended up being a big disappointment. As did other years in the Pitino tenure. But every year felt like they could be a bubble team or better with the one exception being year three when they had to reset with Mason/Murphy/McBrayer, etc. They also drew 12000-13000 fans even against the dregs of college basketball. Now we are hoping for an NIT berth in year three and about 4000 fans show up to the games. Interest has never been lower.

To the OP....I supported the move away from Pitino at the time even though I really liked him. But I wasn't happy about the hire of Johnson. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, but we haven't seen much to this point to sway my initial opinion. That opportunity starts in a couple weeks.
 

MNVCGUY said:
Where are you seeing this overreaction to what has happened so far this season? We definitely need to see more and Johnson is far from out of the woods. There has been definite improvement from last year and there are finally some reasons for hope about the future of the program.

But the real season gets going after the first of the year and this team has to show it can hang with the rest of the conference and dig its way out of the cellar.
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I agree in general with this post.

Maybe I have misread the overall tone of the board. He deserved year three. I think they have looked improved but so hard to form a valid opinion with the competition to this point.
 


The problem wasn’t firing Richard Pitino, it was hiring Ben Johnson instead of Brian Dutcher, who, after winning last night at Gonzaga, is 66-18 with an NCAA finals appearance at SDSU in the 3 years Johnson’s been the coach here. That, not Pitino’s deserved firing, will go down as the worst personnel decision in the history of Gophers athletics. ‬
 



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