Pitino Deserve's A Raise

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jblass said:
A little history from midway through Pitino’s first year as a Gopher coach. A lot of optimism here. Hope things work out better for BJ in the long term.
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Wow. U need to find an avocation besides digging up 8 year old threads on the Hole
 


BarnBoy said:
Everything you say is true and there are many reasons to stay.

But, since you asked, this is what I think.

We are not a top 25 program. (budget, facilities)
The weather stinks (yes, it does)

Those two worry me...
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Agree,facilities matter and as much as we love the barn,I'm not sure about how top players really feel.
 




bleedsmaroonandgold said:
I'm not going to fault anyone for having been excited about a coach in year 1. It is also healthy reminder that we should wait to see the banners start hanging before building the statute, rather than breaking ground at the first sign of potential.
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Is it okay to express optimism prior to hanging banners or should we all be robots until then? I’ll wait for your guidance before proceeding.
 

Keyser Söze said:
Is it okay to express optimism prior to hanging banners or should we all be robots until then? I’ll wait for your guidance before proceeding.
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I'm a MN sports fan, if I don't get to be irrationally happy before the banners are hanging, then I'll never get to be happy. Then what's this all for? I think we should all put on those maroon colored glasses and have some fun.
 





mplarson7 said:
The difference here, Pitino inherited a team that had just gone to the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament. Johnson inherited an empty roster.
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If by you mean players when you say team, well then not exactly. The Gophers returned two starters. Mbakwe, Williams, and Coleman were a big part of that NCAA tournament team and didn't play for Pitino. The Hollins' returning was nice (especially Andre before his career-sapping ankle injury), but you make it sound like the entire team returned.
 

mplarson7 said:
The difference here, Pitino inherited a team that had just gone to the 2nd round of the NCAA tournament. Johnson inherited an empty roster.
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To be fair—the roster emptied after Johnson was hired. Even guys he originally recruited here left. Pitino cobbled it together and won some games early. Johnson built a roster out of spare parts and duct tape and has won some games. Too early to say how Johnson’s career plays out. Same with Pitino though I think his time here speaks for itself.
 

UpAndUnder43 said:
To be fair—the roster emptied after Johnson was hired. Even guys he originally recruited here left. Pitino cobbled it together and won some games early. Johnson built a roster out of spare parts and duct tape and has won some games. Too early to say how Johnson’s career plays out. Same with Pitino though I think his time here speaks for itself.
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A roster that signed to play with Pitino (not Johnson), who was fired in the same season the NCAA allowed unrestricted transfers to all players.

Reviving this thread is the most Minnesota thing possible...making sure to s*** on the only optimism we've had in 7 years.
 

mplarson7 said:
A roster that signed to play with Pitino (not Johnson), who was fired in the same season the NCAA allowed unrestricted transfers to all players.

Reviving this thread is the most Minnesota thing possible...making sure to s*** on the only optimism we've had in 7 years.
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I didn’t revive the thread. I’ll use the powers I have to remove it for you 🤷🏼‍♂️
 



mplarson7 said:
A roster that signed to play with Pitino (not Johnson), who was fired in the same season the NCAA allowed unrestricted transfers to all players.

Reviving this thread is the most Minnesota thing possible...making sure to s*** on the only optimism we've had in 7 years.
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The responses to the thread are more Minnesotan. The logical person would just ignore it and let it die again. Lol. So here we all are
 


gopherguy15 said:
The Hollins' returning was nice (especially Andre before his career-sapping ankle injury), but you make it sound like the entire team returned.
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No, especially Austin returning was nice. Natural leader, very hard worker, and very solid all around player. The biggest difference between Pitino's pretty good first team and pretty disappointing second team was him.

Pitino also inherited a solid veteran offensive-defensive center tandem in Walker and Elliot. I will give Pitino credit for forcing Walker into shape, bringing in a difference maker at point guard, and recruiting important supporting players like King and Smith.
 

Fleckoff said:
Looking back on it, I thought Pitino did a really go job in his first year of piecing the roster together, but also improving the offensive games of the players who returned under Tubby. Pre injury this may have been Andre Hollins best year, Mo dropped 70 pounds and was a new player, EE had his best offensive year, Oto found his shooting stroke, even Mav was a competent bench scorer, but the thing about Tubby's players were they were so fundamentally sound on defense and i think the issue going forward with Richard and it started to show the following replacing Austin Hollins with Carlos Morrie is he was never able to teach defense, or even recruit it on a consistent basis, his best team had Reggie Lynch in the paint and Akeem Spriggs was a good defender who transferred in. I think the one thing that's different about Ben is he pretty much constructed this entire roster, even with Eric Curry I believe was the primary assistant who recruited Eric when he signed, but even this staff will have challenges going forward. Next year, it'll be more of a mix of freshman to go with returnees and transfer, so that will present different challenges. I'm sure all gopher teams will play hard under this staff, but this team has a rare combination of veteran experience, leadership, hoops IQ and intrinsic motivation, the work ethic is uncommon, it's special and as fans we really need to appreciate it. I think they will have more talent next year, but it's a different group and there going to need to learn different lessons, but I trust this staff in there evaluations. As for Pitino now, watched a couple of Lobos games, Mashburn and Arizona State transfer are a nice one, two combo in the back court and I like Applehans, the wing he recruited in 2022, really good shooter, but not quite the athlete to play in the big ten, but ironically the type of shooter he lacked when he was here, however if we is going to make a dent in the Mountain West, needs to get some pieces in the front court, it's year one, but there are some very good coaches in that league between Niko, Dutcher, Miles, Alford, Pitino will need to develop a bench and quite frankly a culture to be successful. I don't doubt that he can assemble enough pieces, but my doubts with him at his current role are if he actually learned from his mistakes at Minnesota. Mountain West isn't the big ten, but the coaches are good enough in that league where he isn't going to be able to just out talent people
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Add Jeff Linder, Leon Rice and with some time Kevin Kruger to that list of good coaches. Agree with your overall comments on MWC.
 

Ewert86PC said:
Ben > Little Ricky
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It's tough to see how anyone could doubt that based on the evidence so far but we have a limited sample so we don't know how much better he will be over the long run. It's possible to be a significantly better coach than Pitino but still not be signficantly more successful over an extended horizon. I wasn't watching during the Monson years but I suspect he was a significantly better coach than Pitino.
 

cjbfbp said:
It's tough to see how anyone could doubt that based on the evidence so far but we have a limited sample so we don't know how much better he will be over the long run. It's possible to be a significantly better coach than Pitino but still not be signficantly more successful over an extended horizon. I wasn't watching during the Monson years but I suspect he was a significantly better coach than Pitino.
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I don't care to go into a complete rehash, however, I would say Pitino was marginally better than Monson, not significantly.
 

Ope3 said:
I don't care to go into a complete rehash, however, I would say Pitino was marginally better than Monson, not significantly.
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Not sure - Monson was not able to recruit much talent, and that is what doomed him imo.
 

cjbfbp said:
It's tough to see how anyone could doubt that based on the evidence so far but we have a limited sample so we don't know how much better he will be over the long run. It's possible to be a significantly better coach than Pitino but still not be signficantly more successful over an extended horizon. I wasn't watching during the Monson years but I suspect he was a significantly better coach than Pitino.
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Dan Monson went 8.5 years without a road win against an NCAA qualifier, with the exception of the 04-05 team when he brought in Molinari, I think every fan on this board would say those were the worst defensive teams they've witness in this program. In football I remember the end of the Brewster, but that Clemson game the day before Monson was greased might have been the most toxic environment I've ever been around
 

cjbfbp said:
No, especially Austin returning was nice. Natural leader, very hard worker, and very solid all around player. The biggest difference between Pitino's pretty good first team and pretty disappointing second team was him.

Pitino also inherited a solid veteran offensive-defensive center tandem in Walker and Elliot. I will give Pitino credit for forcing Walker into shape, bringing in a difference maker at point guard, and recruiting important supporting players like King and Smith.
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I think Pitino did a lot of things well. That said, it struck me that he "grew up" in programs where player development and maniacal devotion to a system were not important. Louisville and Florida (under Donovan) could load up on players in a way that made those things less relevant. I think Pitino did not understand what would need to be done at MN to succeed, although I think he learned as he went along.

I also think he learned about roster construction and the risks that came with "reaching" - especially onerous if you are honorable and will not run kids off. Say what you will, Pitino was honorable.

All that said, I don't really understand basketball the way I do football. So everything I say could be off.
 

touchdownvikings said:
I think Pitino did a lot of things well. That said, it struck me that he "grew up" in programs where player development and maniacal devotion to a system were not important. Louisville and Florida (under Donovan) could load up on players in a way that made those things less relevant. I think Pitino did not understand what would need to be done at MN to succeed, although I think he learned as he went along.

I also think he learned about roster construction and the risks that came with "reaching" - especially onerous if you are honorable and will not run kids off. Say what you will, Pitino was honorable.

All that said, I don't really understand basketball the way I do football. So everything I say could be off.
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I agree with much of what you've written but I'm not 100% on the following:

1) "I think he learned as he went along" Undoubtedly he did learn some things as he went along but his overall winning percentage in his last four years was worse than his first four years. Towards the latter years of his tenure he stated that he needed to do a better job building a bench but that awareness didn't seem to translate into actions that resulted in better bench development.

2) "especially onerous if you are honorable and will not run kids off. Say what you will, Pitino was honorable." I think it was pretty clear to anyone who was watching (and not willfully blind) that he was trying to run off Washington, Buggs, and Gilbert. As to some others who transferred, it's not known what may have been said behind closed doors.
 

Ope3 said:
I don't care to go into a complete rehash, however, I would say Pitino was marginally better than Monson, not significantly.
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Yes, very marginally (.534 overall winning percentage for Pitino vs. .527 for Monson). My expectation that Monson is a better coach comes from his long experience and the fact that he has enjoyed some success during 25 years with 3 different programs. I will be surprised if Pitino is a D1 head coach for 25 years.
 


cjbfbp said:
I agree with much of what you've written but I'm not 100% on the following:

1) "I think he learned as he went along" Undoubtedly he did learn some things as he went along but his overall winning percentage in his last four years was worse than his first four years. Towards the latter years of his tenure he stated that he needed to do a better job building a bench but that awareness didn't seem to translate into actions that resulted in better bench development.

2) "especially onerous if you are honorable and will not run kids off. Say what you will, Pitino was honorable." I think it was pretty clear to anyone who was watching (and not willfully blind) that he was trying to run off Washington, Buggs, and Gilbert. As to some others who transferred, it's not known what may have been said behind closed doors.
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if Pitino was honorable he would have resigned after his first contract ended.
 


So does anyone know the whereabouts of Carlos Squirrel 🐿 Morris these days?
 


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