New Mexico columnist already warning Lobos fans to enjoy Pitino now before he leaves for a P5 job

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BleedGopher

BleedGopher

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per Will Webber:

But make no mistake, Pitino isn’t here for long.

Enjoy him while he's here and savor the success he'll lay at your feet because one day, as Alford showed you eight years ago, a Power 5 school will come calling, and before you know it he'll be carrying his ficus out of the Davalos Center.

Men like Alford and Pitino don't come to New Mexico to grow old and retire. They come here to plant a flag, to resurrect a career and to draw the attention of the big-money suitors looking for the next big thing. Like it or not, that's the reality of college sports and it's the curse of being a Lobo.

But, hey, at least you got your man.

www.santafenewmexican.com

Lobos got their man, but for how long?

Richard Pitino will get a six-year window to turn around a program that has lost its luster.
www.santafenewmexican.com www.santafenewmexican.com

Go Gophers!!
 


It'd be pretty gratifying to see him find redemption there, giving the Lobos some much needed and deserved winning while continuing to hone the areas of his craft which in my opinion need improvement, namely in-game coaching as well as roster management.
 

Or teaching your team how to break a press; developing a system to enable your best player to get open when double teamed or move the ball to take advantage of the double team; and on and on.
 



Pitino needs to improve in two areas, recruiting and in-game coaching, it would be much easier if he had one on lockdown.
 

Ope3 said:
I would love having a Gopher HC plucked for a Blue Blood-like program or the NBA. Seems better than having them get canned for lack of winning or some type of scandal.
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I’ve said this forever about Fleck. If he is so good here that he can get a bigger job it means he reached heights not seen here in 60 years.
 

I was thinking this differently.....


But make no mistake, Pitino isn’t here for long. You'll be begging for his dismissal after 3 or 4 years of watching stale offense and nonexistent defense coupled with the utter inability to break a press.

His players will be unable to execute jump shots and made 3 pointers will be a rarity although shooting 3 pointers will be at an all-time high for the Lobos who will fire without fear of the coach's reprisal. His undisciplined squads will upset some mighty teams and fail to beat the teams they should consistently.

Make sure you watch the home games, cause winning on the road is going to be a memory.

We will be pushing him out the door to his next soft landing arranged by Rick Pitino's coaching tree somewhere in a omnidirectional conference of a lower level than the Mountain West.

But hey, we got our guy.
 

Otis said:
I was thinking this differently.....


But make no mistake, Pitino isn’t here for long. You'll be begging for his dismissal after 3 or 4 years of watching stale offense and nonexistent defense coupled with the utter inability to break a press.

His players will be unable to execute jump shots and made 3 pointers will be a rarity although shooting 3 pointers will be at an all-time high for the Lobos who will fire without fear of the coach's reprisal. His undisciplined squads will upset some mighty teams and fail to beat the teams they should consistently.

Make sure you watch the home games, cause winning on the road is going to be a memory.

We will be pushing him out the door to his next soft landing arranged by Rick Pitino's coaching tree somewhere in a omnidirectional conference of a lower level than the Mountain West.

But hey, we got our guy.
Click to expand...
We get it. You don’t like pitino. Take a break. Get some fresh air. Move on. Unless he kissed your wife or kicked your dog this grudge is getting weird.
 



UpAndUnder43 said:
I’ve said this forever about Fleck. If he is so good here that he can get a bigger job it means he reached heights not seen here in 60 years.
Click to expand...
+1

I feel like I've seen this board express concerns that Tubby, Pitino, Mason, Kill, and Fleck were going to end up having so much success that they would leave us for a better job. So far that did not happen with any of them (one is obviously still here). My take has always been that, if the worst thing that happens with a coaching hire is that the coach has so much success that a more prominent employer hires them away, then we should consider that a successful hire, and we are probably on solid ground to make another successful hire.

Obviously, I'd prefer if they brought us to blue blood level success, and then stayed for a long career and became a Minnesota legend. But, I would definitely be ok with us being turned into a championship contender and then hiring someone to reload instead of rebuild.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
+1

I feel like I've seen this board express concerns that Tubby, Pitino, Mason, Kill, and Fleck were going to end up having so much success that they would leave us for a better job. So far that did not happen with any of them (one is obviously still here). My take has always been that, if the worst thing that happens with a coaching hire is that the coach has so much success that a more prominent employer hires them away, then we should consider that a successful hire, and we are probably on solid ground to make another successful hire.

Obviously, I'd prefer if they brought us to blue blood level success, and then stayed for a long career and became a Minnesota legend. But, I would definitely be ok with us being turned into a championship contender and then hiring someone to reload instead of rebuild.
Click to expand...

It has been nearly 40 years since a Gopher head coach in football, men's basketball, or men's hockey left on his own to take another job. But, yet, Gopher fans make this seemingly their number one worry year after year. Heck, sometimes even before we hire a guy. Much of the thread about Dennis Gates is people worrying he'll leave for Florida State.
 
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tjgopher said:
It has been more than 40 years since a Gopher head coach in football, men's basketball, or men's hockey left on his own to take another job. But, yet, Gopher fans make this seemingly their number one worry year after year. Heck, sometimes even before we hire a guy. Much of the thread about Dennis Gates is people worrying he'll leave for Florida State.
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Curse of Lou Holtz got us shook
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
Obviously, I'd prefer if they brought us to blue blood level success, and then stayed for a long career and became a Minnesota legend. But, I would definitely be ok with us being turned into a championship contender and then hiring someone to reload instead of rebuild.
Click to expand...

The best possible scenario for a short-term coach is what Iowa experienced in the mid-eighties. George Raveling took over after Lute Olson departed and stayed only three years before moving to USC. His teams were reasonably successful on the court during that period but man oh man could the guy recruit. He left his successor, Tom Davis, with a boatload of good players and Davis coached them to 30 wins in his first year.
 



cjbfbp said:
The best possible scenario for a short-term coach is what Iowa experienced in the mid-eighties. George Raveling took over after Lute Olson departed and stayed only three years before moving to USC. His teams were reasonably successful on the court during that period but man oh man could the guy recruit. He left his successor, Tom Davis, with a boatload of good players and Davis coached them to 30 wins in his first year.
Click to expand...

Yeah Raveling missed the tourney in his first year and then muddled through two more years of decent ball, including losing in Minneapolis to NC State in the 1st round of the NCAA Tourney. But, he brought in Marble, Horton, Armstrong, Gamble, Jones, Wright, Reeves, Moe, Hill, Jepsen, etc. A lot of those dudes played pro ball.
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
I’ve said this forever about Fleck. If he is so good here that he can get a bigger job it means he reached heights not seen here in 60 years.
Click to expand...
Not necessarily.

Certainly possible he could get hired away after having some pretty good but not great years. If he were to have another 10 win season and get hired away, I don’t think that does much for the program and I will expect his replacement to basically have to start from scratch.

If he is here another 6-10 years of wining then that would be long enough to sustain success after a coaching change and permanently change the way recruits view MN but not after one more season, I would expect us to revert back to the mean if he left after this year which wouldn’t do us much good.
 

die hard gopher said:
Not necessarily.

Certainly possible he could get hired away after having some pretty good but not great years. If he were to have another 10 win season and get hired away, I don’t think that does much for the program and I will expect his replacement to basically have to start from scratch.

If he is here another 6-10 years of wining then that would be long enough to sustain success after a coaching change and permanently change the way recruits view MN but not after one more season, I would expect us to revert back to the mean if he left after this year which wouldn’t do us much good.
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Well if he has another 10 win season wouldn’t that be heights not seen in 60 years? Good talk.
 


I'm not sold on Pitino as a mid-major, high-major or head coach period. I wish him all the best, but I doubt that he'll all of the sudden transform the Lobos into instant contenders. Maybe over time he'll prove me wrong, but as of now I think of him as another Dan Monson rather than a legitimate builder of programs.
 

It doesn't look like Pitino will inherit the talent he did when he came to Minnesota. He'll have a tough road to start off. Per Fleck. Is this year 0?
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
Well if he has another 10 win season wouldn’t that be heights not seen in 60 years? Good talk.
Click to expand...
It would be nice and all but i'd rather we find our Alvarez or Ferentz or Dantonio or Fitz that can lead us to over a decade of sustained success. I just wouldn't expect the next coach to be able to build off of what PJ built if he only stays for one more year.
 

nitramnaed said:
It doesn't look like Pitino will inherit the talent he did when he came to Minnesota. He'll have a tough road to start off. Per Fleck. Is this year 0?
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Minnesota will clearly be year 0 if more members of the team leave.
 

die hard gopher said:
It would be nice and all but i'd rather we find our Alvarez or Ferentz or Dantonio or Fitz that can lead us to over a decade of sustained success. I just wouldn't expect the next coach to be able to build off of what PJ built if he only stays for one more year.
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I don’t disagree but if he leaves for a bigger job, its because he was successful here. We haven’t had that in 40+ years and he’d have shown its possible.
 

Ope3 said:
I would love having a Gopher HC plucked for a Blue Blood-like program or the NBA. Seems better than having them get canned for lack of winning or some type of scandal.
Click to expand...

Well, getting a coach from the NBA is not an automatic slam dunk. Of the top of my head, I can think of four and the results were mixed.

Larry Brown; took both UCLA and Kansas to the final four; won a national championship at Kansas; also resurrected a dormant SMU program

Mike Montgomery: successful coach at Montana and Stanford; went to the NBA to coach the Warriors (with mixed results); returned to the college ranks to coach Cal and did pretty well there in his final coaching stint

Jeff Bzdelik: left the NBA to coach at Air Force and took them to the semifinals of the NIT; left to go to Colorado and was not successful there; left Colorado to go to Wake Forest and was not successful there; returned to the NBA as an assistant

Eddie Jordan: after the NBA, took over his alma mater, Rutgers; failed there miserably; pretty good player, pretty poor coach
 

Seems like a lot of qualified candidates out there, but I can't help remembering...Even Buzz Williams turned us down.
 

"Enjoy him while he's here and savor the success he'll lay at your feet because one day, as Alford showed you eight years ago, a Power 5 school will come calling, and before you know it he'll be carrying his ficus out of the Davalos Center."

I had to read that passage again just to confirm to myself that someone actually wrote this and put his name to it. Ah, Mr. Webber, both coaches came to NM from a Big Ten program but I think the similarity ends there.
 

nitramnaed said:
It doesn't look like Pitino will inherit the talent he did when he came to Minnesota. He'll have a tough road to start off. Per Fleck. Is this year 0?
Click to expand...
Year 0 but with a huge "play right away" transfer pool that hasn't existed before. If you need a new roster, which the Lobos do, this is the year to do it. Instead of having to do a Gates and go just through the JC route, now you can do it with anyone in the pool.
 

cjbfbp said:
Well, getting a coach from the NBA is not an automatic slam dunk. Of the top of my head, I can think of four and the results were mixed.

Larry Brown; took both UCLA and Kansas to the final four; won a national championship at Kansas; also resurrected a dormant SMU program

Mike Montgomery: successful coach at Montana and Stanford; went to the NBA to coach the Warriors (with mixed results); returned to the college ranks to coach Cal and did pretty well there in his final coaching stint

Jeff Bzdelik: left the NBA to coach at Air Force and took them to the semifinals of the NIT; left to go to Colorado and was not successful there; left Colorado to go to Wake Forest and was not successful there; returned to the NBA as an assistant

Eddie Jordan: after the NBA, took over his alma mater, Rutgers; failed there miserably; pretty good player, pretty poor coach
Click to expand...

I agree, that's why I said a Gopher HC plucked "for" a Blue Blood or NBA, not "from".
 

Otis said:
Make sure you watch the home games, cause winning on the road is going to be a memory.
Click to expand...
It's a good thing Pitino didn't get hired to coach the Lobos last year; they didn't have any home games this season. The governor imposed a 14 day quarantine upon re-entering New Mexico for anyone travelling out of state, so the coach moved the team to Las Vegas so they could have some semblance of a season.
 

Otis said:
I was thinking this differently.....


But make no mistake, Pitino isn’t here for long. You'll be begging for his dismissal after 3 or 4 years of watching stale offense and nonexistent defense coupled with the utter inability to break a press.

His players will be unable to execute jump shots and made 3 pointers will be a rarity although shooting 3 pointers will be at an all-time high for the Lobos who will fire without fear of the coach's reprisal. His undisciplined squads will upset some mighty teams and fail to beat the teams they should consistently.

Make sure you watch the home games, cause winning on the road is going to be a memory.

We will be pushing him out the door to his next soft landing arranged by Rick Pitino's coaching tree somewhere in a omnidirectional conference of a lower level than the Mountain West.

But hey, we got our guy.
Click to expand...
BOOM! goes the Dynamite!
 

cjbfbp said:
Well, getting a coach from the NBA is not an automatic slam dunk. Of the top of my head, I can think of four and the results were mixed.

Larry Brown; took both UCLA and Kansas to the final four; won a national championship at Kansas; also resurrected a dormant SMU program

Mike Montgomery: successful coach at Montana and Stanford; went to the NBA to coach the Warriors (with mixed results); returned to the college ranks to coach Cal and did pretty well there in his final coaching stint

Jeff Bzdelik: left the NBA to coach at Air Force and took them to the semifinals of the NIT; left to go to Colorado and was not successful there; left Colorado to go to Wake Forest and was not successful there; returned to the NBA as an assistant

Eddie Jordan: after the NBA, took over his alma mater, Rutgers; failed there miserably; pretty good player, pretty poor coach
Click to expand...
Isaiah Thomas, Clyde Drexler, and Chris Mullin didn’t work out too well either.
 

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