They could lose the next 4 in a row and it’s highly unlikely Pitino is fired before the end of the season.
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- Thread starter benlaur
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They could lose the next 4 in a row and it’s highly unlikely Pitino is fired before the end of the season.
Not likely, I know. They don't lack for interim options if Coyle has reached his decision though.
BarnBurner
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I get that.
Personally, I feel that, if we have a bad season, RP should have to suffer through it like everyone else.
MplsGopher
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If Coyle is good and ready to pull the trigger on hiring someone else, I am fine with whenever he wants to do it. There could be pros/cons to doing it either way.
Results are a symptom of a program strength not the end all be all. A lot of factors.
Pitino has shown me enough to know we were going to be bad this year. 2020-21 is a make or break year for his tenure.
Bad Gopher
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Recruiting is where I think he's doing alright. At least one 4-star recruit over the past few recruiting years, which I think exceeds expectations since he doesn't have a whole lot to sell in terms of on-court results or a coherent identity on either offense or defense. The problem, obviously, has been translating those recruiting star rankings to conference wins. As I noted in another post, Haskins took a team to an Elite Eight with far lower-rated talent than what we've had on these recent rosters. This leads to one or more conclusions or some combination: 1) the recruits are overrated; 2) the recruits don't fit together into a complementary team 3) the development and coaching of those players isn't what it should be.
We seem to be perennially stuck in rebuilding with a short bench and a hammy pull a way from writing off the year. We need some better balance if we are going to take big swings, because it seems we are having to do a lot of scrambling.
dpodoll68
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And yet, Monson had a better Big Ten winning percentage than Pitino despite being saddled with post-cheating restrictions.
I don't understand any fear of firing Pitino. It would be very easy to do much, much better and almost impossible to do worse.
Results are facts that cannot be disputed. You can asterisk wins as much as you can losses, but either way they are still wins and losses. For the sake of the board, put up your factors and let's discuss how well we have performed vs your other factors.
I still hope Pitino hits it out of the park, but that should not prevent honest discourse from happening.
Gopherfan84
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It's not as easy as you think and quite possible to do worse which is scary, but shouldn't be the reason to not change. If you think hiring a coach is truly this easy then you should be working in athletic offices.
dpodoll68
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Weird comment, given that Thibodeau had a better winning percentage than Sam Mitchell, Flip Saunders 2.0, Rick Adelman, Kurt Rambis, Kevin McHale, Randy Wittman, and Dwane Casey. Thibodeau has the second-highest winning percentage in Timberwolves history behind Flip Saunders. Just a really strange comment all-around.
dpodoll68
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Hiring a better coach than Richard Pitino at a Big Ten job is quite easy.
I didn't say it would be impossible, I said almost impossible. I suppose someone could break his record for worst Big Ten winning percentage in school history, but it would be very difficult.
Gopherfan84
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He had that high of a winning percentage but was passed by numerous teams in the league until our inept owner hired him. There is more to it than just winning percentage. Thibs was going to lead the Wolves into a further oblivion with his antics. He had one good year to skew his stats, but rebuilds take longer so he's a good example. McHale, Rambis, and Wittman would've been wonderful examples of ineptness as well.
You're ability to stay this linear is impressive. I'm not even siding with RP being a good coach, but the idea that hiring better is easy based on a win percentage alone is laughable. Can we do better? of course! Could we do worse? Yes and it's not as hard as you think.
MissouriGopher
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And yet, the median Pitino season has more B1G wins than the median Monson season (adjusted for games played).
Bob_Loblaw
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Lets say that we are now factoring in bad luck but we also do it for Tubby (Royce White, Devoe Joseph, Justin Cobbs, injuring to Al, etc.).
Can you imagine how drastic that would make the drop off from Tubby to Pitino?
Now, I'm not saying we should have kept Tubby, my entire point is that you can play this game for every single coach. It's part of sports. It's why depth matters and you shouldn't have countless players who are either incapable of playing or not allowed to play.
As far as upward trajectory - I don't think that is our trajectory. That might be our hope, but as of right now, it sure looks like we have our highest data point (last year), with a line an arrow aiming down from there.
Can you imagine how drastic that would make the drop off from Tubby to Pitino?
Now, I'm not saying we should have kept Tubby, my entire point is that you can play this game for every single coach. It's part of sports. It's why depth matters and you shouldn't have countless players who are either incapable of playing or not allowed to play.
As far as upward trajectory - I don't think that is our trajectory. That might be our hope, but as of right now, it sure looks like we have our highest data point (last year), with a line an arrow aiming down from there.
Thibs sucked the joy out of basketball...just ask the players.
You badly misinterpret what I said.
I wanted Pitino fired last year. Don’t think he manages a roster well.
but unless they’re idiots they brought him back this year knowing we would take a big step back.
I don’t think Coyle is an idiot.
behind the scenes Coyle must think Pitino has got things going the right way. I don’t see it.
I don’t think he will be fired before 2021 though
2014
N Mason (not heavily recruited)
J Martin
B Konate
G Diedhou
2015
K Dorsey (highest ranked at #125)
D McBrayer. (not heavily recruited)
J Murphy (not heavily recruited)
A Gilbert
J Johnson
2016 (good class)
Coffey
Curry
Hurt
2017
I Washington (not heavily recruited)
J Harris
2018
Oturu
Gabe (not heavily recruited)
Omersa (not heavily recruited)
2019
(time will tell, but underwhelming class at this point)
Transfers Stull, Demir, Morris not particularly impressive. Lynch and Springs hits.
I don't see us getting enuf highly desired recruits and/or winning recruiting battles to the extent we should. Maybe I'm missing something. I do give Pitino credit for making making the most out of an insufficient hand.
SonoranGopher1
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Bob_Loblaw
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Thibs had a much more talented roster than those folks.
I don't have a long history as a Gopher fan but I don't think much at all of Pitino's player development. I think his player development has been pretty bad. You don't judge a coach's player development by his best players - you judge that by all the other players. Think of coaches like teachers. Any teacher can have good results with a class full of "A" students but what the teacher does with the lesser students is the true benchmark for the quality of his training program. Top players, like top students, have talent, drive, and a sense of what things to do to improve. Lesser performers don't have as much of those dimensions.
I would argue that a number of players actually regressed under Pitino and others didn't improve nearly as much as you would expect a player to do after playing three or four years of high major basketball. For the most part, his best players like Murphy, Coffey, and Lynch were good when they arrived here (Murphy was the best player on a bad team as a freshman) and they improved about as much as they would have with any coach. Mason improved but he never became the kind of point guard that was very good at making plays for others which is something you really need when you don't have a lot of natural talent on a roster.
I think that's a reasonable assessment. Two players who quickly come to mind that fit that profile are Michael Hurt and Bakary Konate. Both flat lined from their freshman year. Hurt never looked like he would be a star but if you had told me that he wouldn't come close to starting basketball games by his senior year, I'd have been really surprised. He has skills, but he doesn't have the confidence and arrogance to play decent minutes at a high D1 level. That's coaching. There's a player in there and Pitino hasn't been able to pull him out. Konate always looked and acted like a basketball player on the court. Unfortunately, he couldn't play. At all. I was surprised that Pitino couldn't get anything out of him.
I have to disagree with you there. The players that have stuck 3-4 years with Pitino have improved a lot. That has not been his problem. His problem has been that he has had so many misses on the recruiting trail who were not able to cut it or had behavioral issues especially early in his stay here:
Problems: McNeil, Lofton, Dorsey, Lynch
Health or injuries: Curry, Johnson, Fitzgerald
Bad fit or lack of ability at this level: Martin, Gilbert, Konate, Gaston, Harris, Washington, Buggs
Good development: King, Walker, Austin Hollins, Murphy, Coffey, Mason, Oturu (big jump already).
Not much development: McBrayer and Hurt. McBrayer was developing but perhaps his injuries ended up derailing him. Hurt knows where to be on the court and has gotten better but not at the level one would hope.
Finding the right roster fits, building a full balanced roster and keeping guys 4 years has been the biggest issue with Pitino. I think that is getting better although the Harris, Washington class was a disaster (did get two real good transfers in Carr and Willis).
Gopherfan84
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I'd say the two you mentioned are the best examples. Konate was on his way to developing a pretty decent hook shot early in his soph year but, for reasons unknown, he went away from that and was practically a non-entity on the offensive end for the rest of his career. Bakary's points per 40 minutes went from 10.9 his freshman year to 8.9 his soph year to 6.6 his junior year to 4.8 in his final year. That's a clear regression at least on the offensive end. Hurt improved from his freshman to soph year (most people do) but has not improved much at all since (although he did play well against Clemson).
A number of other players have regressed under Pitino. Three immediately come to mind. Elliot was a pretty decent defensive center during Pitino's first year but regressed into a mess his senior year. Both Morris and Mathieu were better in their first (junior) year than their second under this coach.
I refuse to debate someone who simply ignores the arguments of the person on the other side. The point of my last post was that you don't judge a coach's player development by his top players unless they weren't so good to start with, but you insist on doing just that.
Crediting Pitino for the development of Austin Hollins is laughable. Austin was tremendously motivated, a natural leader, and the son of an NBA coach. Furthermore, he played only one year for Pitino. I'll give Pitino credit for getting Walker to lose weight. Oturu was very good when he arrived here. His improvement in production this year is about what you would expect from a player of his caliber who is now the #1 player on the team instead of the third or fourth option. I've already commented on Murphy and Mason.