Pitino vs. Pitino (in their words)

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Love the part about Richard wearing a Gold Suit if it would help the program.
(His dad wear's an all white suite on "white out" games at Louisville.)
 

Winasota Gopher said:
Does anyone have insider and give a recap of this story?

http://insider.espn.go.com/blog/ncbrecruitingon-the-trail/post/_/id/12182/richard-pitino-follows-fathers-recruiting-footsteps

Preview sentences talk about the big 3 and recruiting them.
Click to expand...

"Richard Pitino and his staff were intent to make a big splash upon arriving at Minnesota in April 2013.

Or at least they were obligated to try.

Tyus Jones, Rashad Vaughn, and Reid Travis were all local five-star prospects. Pitino’s predecessor was let go in large part because of his lackluster reputation on the recruiting trail, so Pitino had no choice but to jump in feet first and try to catch the dozens of other programs who had been recruiting the trio for years.

While Minnesota ultimately lost out to Duke, UNLV, and Stanford respectively, Minnesota's staff quickly learned lessons that helped shape its recruiting philosophy moving forward, and ultimately lead them to four early commitments in the 2015 class.

“After that first experience we realized we had to be patient,” Minnesota assistant coach Kimani Young said. “This is going to take some time to build and we needed to home in on getting classes that could help elevate our program from year to year.”

Perhaps the hardest part of that realization is selling it to the Golden Gopher faithful who were expecting an overnight savior, simply because his last name is Pitino.

Minnesota’s upcoming matchup with Louisville at the Armed Forces Classic has again brought up comparisons between father and son, but the reality is that Rick Pitino is a 62-year-old Hall of Famer with two national championships and seven Final Fours to his name, while Richard is 32 years old and has yet to lead a team to the NCAA tournament.

While the comparison isn’t yet a fair one, there’s a definite correlation between father and son at a similar point in their careers.

Rick Pitino was in his early 30s when he took over his first high-major job at Providence. He arrived having had the opportunity to learn under Jim Boeheim and Hubie Brown and then cut his teeth as a first-time Division I head coach at Boston University.

Richard’s path has been nearly identical as he learned under both his father and Billy Donovan before exceeding expectations at Florida International.

Even the lessons learned on the recruiting trail are very similar to what Rick experienced at Providence almost 30 years ago when Stu Jackson, who would go on to be a longtime coach and executive in the NBA -- and most recently the Big East’s senior associate commissioner for men’s basketball -- served as his assistant coach and recruiting coordinator.

“The type of player that we recruited at Providence is obviously much different than the type of player he can now recruit at Louisville,” Jackson said of his former boss. “At Louisville, he can go after only top 100 players in the country and be successful, but we didn’t have that luxury when we were starting out at Providence.

“The focus was on finding players that were skilled, who could shoot, pass, run, catch and dribble the basketball. We felt that a skilled player might not be the most physically gifted, but that we could develop them into a major college player.”

Rick Pitino has always been favorable to a certain type of player, both as he built programs from the ground up and later as he constructed supporting casts for some of the most talented teams in college basketball. Given that his son coached under him and implanted a very similar style at Minnesota, it’s only natural that he’d value a similar prototype.

“We obviously play very similarly," said Minnesota assistant Dan McHale, who got his start under Rick Pitino as an undergraduate manager at Kentucky and later a staff assistant at Louisville. "We’re going to press, we’re going to play up and down and we’re going to shoot a lot of 3s."

When Minnesota missed out on Jones, Vaughn, and Travis, Richard Pitino returned to his roots and ended up delivering the type of solid class that not only fits his style of play, but that they can develop in much the same way his father did when taking over a new program.

“Those first staffs at Louisville, with Mick Cronin and Kevin Willard, he wanted Francisco Garcia because he was his prototypical small forward. ... We’ve got to try and get the best players that fit our system," McHale said. "Nate Mason was under the radar last year. Carlos Morris is a high energy playmaker that can shoot the basketball.”

When these two teams square off on Nov. 14, the styles will be comparable, but that doesn’t mean the programs are comparable. Not yet anyway. The father is still the teacher and the son still the student, but Richard Pitino has followed the blueprint at every step along the way and isn’t about to veer off course now."

Not a recap but there you go! :)
 



This was really an enjoyable read, and great exposure for the program.
 

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