Reusse: In three short years, Pitino has turned the Gophers into a joke

McHale's replacement was an Assistant at Oregon State, before coming here last year as Director of operations. He has plenty of experience. One could argue he should've gotten a Molinari type, but the no experience argument just isn't true

Good point. I had forgotten about that. Nevertheless the drop off without McHale is glaring.
 

What facts did Patrick get incorrect in this story?

Honestly not trying to start something as we're all clear where I stand (HA!) but I'm honestly curious about what he has incorrect.

It hasn't been three years yet.
 



Nothing Mr Reusse said is untrue. The players we have are mostly all recruited by Coach Pitino. His players and his coaching are responsible for this year's outcome of poor play.
I am still hoping that Coach Pitino can show us his ability to teach these kids to play basketball. The B1G season is still young. Our players are still learning.
If, however, the kids are still playing bad defense and failing to run an offense with good ball movement in March, then I think there is significant cause for considering a new coaching direction.
 


Now you cannot expect him to bat 1.000. I don't say fire him because he made a mistake. I just hate when people try to cast #1 blame on the prior coach one, because it's factually inaccurate but also, because it brings out the worst types of posters here.

I don't expect any coach to bat 1.000 in recruiting. It started with getting nothing out of Tubby's last two classes, which is why I labeled that #1. Follow that with Pitino missing on McNeil, Lofton, Martin, and Diedhiou and you get what is happening this year. So I think they are both to blame.

Pitino overachieved in year 1, underachieved last year, yet they did lose 7 B1G games by 5 points or less and two more by 6 points. They really were not far off from having a good year last year. This year has gone pretty close to expectations, with the exception of 1 or 2 games.

I'm still optimistic about where this program is heading under Pitino. People like Ruesse who want to complain about this year, had their blinders on if they expected more. This season has been a long time coming.
 

Is Smith to Pitino basketball's equivalent of Mason to Brewster?
 

Call me part of the problem if you must, edging this program to/past mediocrity, refusing to insist on whatever the hell I'm supposed to be thinking I can insist on as a fan to affect an outcome. Excellence?
A close friend I've attended games with for years affirms I said "next year is going to NOT be pretty" last February.
And so it is not. Its ugly.
But its not a joke.

I really feel totally unconcerned about how things are going this year, and while I've been depressed in previous years this isn't the case right now. Let me say it again: I hope we can get through this year without the destruction of the young players's confidence. Now I'll add - the young coach's confidence as well.

I'm a developmental person - I love to see players develop which is why I prefer college BB over pro. I'm a teacher and parent and I've seen more hopeless cases than what we have here now on the floor. I'm also relationship oriented, and I happen to think it matters if I have a foot out the door while someone is trying to do a job. If half the fan base is calling for the firing of a coach (because, gosh, I'm frustrated!) I consider that undermining the program.

I think the U has made good decisions in the past regarding when they moved on. I hope they'll allow this process to play out because...well...I DON'T have a bad feeling about this.
 




And neither of them have amounted to anything. Instead Pitino brought in Little Dre, King, and McNeil who was showing promise before he screwed up. They are all better players than anyone in Tubby's last two classes - Buggs, Ellenson, Foster, and Ellis and that was with only a few months to recruit. The year before that Tubby's class was Andre Hollins, Joe Coleman, Julian Welch, and Andre Ingram, not very good outside of Hollins.

I'm not saying Pitino doesn't deserve some blame, he has missed on some prospects. But anyone who says Tubby doesn't deserve some of the blame or couldn't see this year coming, was not paying attention the last several years.
Agree 100%

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
 

Meanwhile. ..MSU is crushing IL. By 25 in the first half without valentine

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
 

Call me part of the problem if you must, edging this program to/past mediocrity, refusing to insist on whatever the hell I'm supposed to be thinking I can insist on as a fan to affect an outcome. Excellence?
A close friend I've attended games with for years affirms I said "next year is going to NOT be pretty" last February.
And so it is not. Its ugly.
But its not a joke.

I really feel totally unconcerned about how things are going this year, and while I've been depressed in previous years this isn't the case right now. Let me say it again: I hope we can get through this year without the destruction of the young players's confidence. Now I'll add - the young coach's confidence as well.

I'm a developmental person - I love to see players develop which is why I prefer college BB over pro. I'm a teacher and parent and I've seen more hopeless cases than what we have here now on the floor. I'm also relationship oriented, and I happen to think it matters if I have a foot out the door while someone is trying to do a job. If half the fan base is calling for the firing of a coach (because, gosh, I'm frustrated!) I consider that undermining the program.

I think the U has made good decisions in the past regarding when they moved on. I hope they'll allow this process to play out because...well...I DON'T have a bad feeling about this.

Well said.
 

Call me part of the problem if you must, edging this program to/past mediocrity, refusing to insist on whatever the hell I'm supposed to be thinking I can insist on as a fan to affect an outcome. Excellence?
A close friend I've attended games with for years affirms I said "next year is going to NOT be pretty" last February.
And so it is not. Its ugly.
But its not a joke.

I really feel totally unconcerned about how things are going this year, and while I've been depressed in previous years this isn't the case right now. Let me say it again: I hope we can get through this year without the destruction of the young players's confidence. Now I'll add - the young coach's confidence as well.

I'm a developmental person - I love to see players develop which is why I prefer college BB over pro. I'm a teacher and parent and I've seen more hopeless cases than what we have here now on the floor. I'm also relationship oriented, and I happen to think it matters if I have a foot out the door while someone is trying to do a job. If half the fan base is calling for the firing of a coach (because, gosh, I'm frustrated!) I consider that undermining the program.

I think the U has made good decisions in the past regarding when they moved on. I hope they'll allow this process to play out because...well...I DON'T have a bad feeling about this.

This is just a fantastic post. I continue to have to restrain myself because I told myself and the world that it won't be fair to make any judgments until halfway through the conference schedule, and I need to stick to that. If we continue to see the same defensive lapses and aimless offense after that, it's more fair game.
 



I do not consider myself a bb expert by any means, especiallly when I read many of the insightful posts on this site (no sarcasm). I realize how little I know about recruiting and development of players and their roles in the offense and defense. In other words, I consider myself a diehard Gopher fan that wants to see the Gophers succeed in every sport. Regarding this year, I do believe that most gopher fans, including myself, knew that this was going to be a challenging year. So far it has been. However, there is a lack of competition in some of the early non-conference games that give a fan like me pause in believing that Pitino is the right coach. I do think he should be given one more year, but if we do not make the tournament next year he should likely move on. He is making seven figures and that warrants expected results. My biggest concern is the steady decline in the play with his recruits. I understand the team is young, which is why he should be given one more year. But if next year is a bust then we have to rejuvenate the program by bringing in a new coach because fan apathy will set in and no one will care much about bball. Even for me this year, I have not been catching many games because I feel I already know the outcome. I have never had this attitude. I like Pitino and I like the exposure he brings, but that only goes so far, we need to win. I am keeping my fingers crossed that he turns this around because I do not want to have to watch another rebuild.
 

Call me part of the problem if you must, edging this program to/past mediocrity, refusing to insist on whatever the hell I'm supposed to be thinking I can insist on as a fan to affect an outcome. Excellence?
A close friend I've attended games with for years affirms I said "next year is going to NOT be pretty" last February.
And so it is not. Its ugly.
But its not a joke.

I really feel totally unconcerned about how things are going this year, and while I've been depressed in previous years this isn't the case right now. Let me say it again: I hope we can get through this year without the destruction of the young players's confidence. Now I'll add - the young coach's confidence as well.

I'm a developmental person - I love to see players develop which is why I prefer college BB over pro. I'm a teacher and parent and I've seen more hopeless cases than what we have here now on the floor. I'm also relationship oriented, and I happen to think it matters if I have a foot out the door while someone is trying to do a job. If half the fan base is calling for the firing of a coach (because, gosh, I'm frustrated!) I consider that undermining the program.

I think the U has made good decisions in the past regarding when they moved on. I hope they'll allow this process to play out because...well...I DON'T have a bad feeling about this.

Excellent post Moonlight!

The thing that Reusse fails to do in his column is measure results against expectations. Last year's roster was senior heavy with some players who performed well in the NIT and were expected to perform better than they actually achieved. I don't know of a soul on this site that thought this years team was going to be anything better than a rebuilding effort and was destined to struggle. Shocker that in January we have a poor record. Losing to some smaller teams is aggravating but shouldn't be unexpected and struggling in the B1G is not exactly new to Gopher B-Ball.

Reusse and others who wish for the University to fire Pitino, when he has promising Freshmen and an excellent recruiting class, are measuring the Gophers performance against expectations that solely exist in their own minds.
 

I don't know of a soul on this site that thought this years team was going to be anything better than a rebuilding effort and was destined to struggle. Shocker that in January we have a poor record. Losing to some smaller teams is aggravating but shouldn't be unexpected and struggling in the B1G is not exactly new to Gopher B-Ball.

While I agree that anyone who was paying close attention should have expected a rebuilding year, I don't agree that the record to date should have been expected. If you look at the standings of the top six basketball conferences, the following teams have losing records at this point of the season:

St. John's
DePaul
Minnesota
Rutgers
Boston College

That's 5 of 75 or about 6.7% of the teams in those 6 conferences. I expect that more than 6.7% of power conference basketball teams are going through rebuilding years of some sort.

All of the quantitative ranking indexes employ strength of schedule in their computations. Sagarin, BPI, and Pomeroy employ similar methodologies and so they generally are not too far apart in their rankings. Minnesota is #161 in Sagarin, #158 in Pomeroy, and #154 in BPI. I'll use Sagarin because those openly published results are sorted by conference.

Of the five teams above, Rutgers, St. John's, and Boston College are ranked below the Gophers by Sagarin. If the Gophers are ranked #161 but above the three teams mentioned above, that means the Gophers are ranked lower than 71 power conference teams and 89 mid-major teams. That's really bad for a power conference team.

Wisconsin is clearly going through a rebuilding year; they lost their coach and return only 2 regular rotation players (albeit pretty good ones) from last year's final four team but they are 9-7 and ranked #57. No team in the Big Ten has had more adversity to their roster than Illinois, but they are 8-8 and ranked #103.

Here's a sampling of teams that, at the beginning of the season, I would have been very surprised to trail in ranking at this point:

#128 SUNY Albany
#136 Fordham
#158 North Carolina-Asheville
#160 Cal Poly-SLO
#132 North Carolina-Wilmington
#142 Columbia
#129 Eastern Michigan
#147 Morehead State
#156 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
#155 IPFW
#106 Georgia State
#157 Cal State Bakersfield
 

While I agree that anyone who was paying close attention should have expected a rebuilding year, I don't agree that the record to date should have been expected. If you look at the standings of the top six basketball conferences, the following teams have losing records at this point of the season:

St. John's
DePaul
Minnesota
Rutgers
Boston College

That's 5 of 75 or about 6.7% of the teams in those 6 conferences. I expect that more than 6.7% of power conference basketball teams are going through rebuilding years of some sort.

All of the quantitative ranking indexes employ strength of schedule in their computations. Sagarin, BPI, and Pomeroy employ similar methodologies and so they generally are not too far apart in their rankings. Minnesota is #161 in Sagarin, #158 in Pomeroy, and #154 in BPI. I'll use Sagarin because those openly published results are sorted by conference.

Of the five teams above, Rutgers, St. John's, and Boston College are ranked below the Gophers by Sagarin. If the Gophers are ranked #161 but above the three teams mentioned above, that means the Gophers are ranked lower than 71 power conference teams and 89 mid-major teams. That's really bad for a power conference team.

Wisconsin is clearly going through a rebuilding year; they lost their coach and return only 2 regular rotation players (albeit pretty good ones) from last year's final four team but they are 9-7 and ranked #57. No team in the Big Ten has had more adversity to their roster than Illinois, but they are 8-8 and ranked #103.

^^THIS^^

I like Coach Pitino and I too knew this would be a rough year but what shocks me is the "I'm not worried" and "I'm not concerned" crowd. I'm worried and concerned that so many people aren't worried and concerned. If we were Duke or Kentucky and we had a bad year due to our seniors graduating then having a season like this wouldn't be as hard to stomach because we know we're a powerhouse with a powerhouse coach and we'll be back to the powerhouse level the next season. But we're not. We're Minnesota. Having a horrific season like this one can hurt recruiting. Again, one bad season doesn't have this effect on the Dukes and Kentucky's of the world.

The comments on here about not worrying and not being concerned bothers me more than our horrible basketball record thus far this season. I think Gopher fans are so used to poor to mediocre sports programs that ones sense of urgency and concern simply doesn't kick in. I'm not saying everyone should jump on the "Fire Coach Pitino NOW!" bandwagon but people need to feel a little more concern and worry.

As a reminder; we lost at home to South Dakota and South Dakota State. THAT should not happen regardless of how rough a season we're predicted to have. As cjbfbp pointed out, Wisky too is having a bad season but their bad isn't nearly as bad as our bad.
 

Considering how the only Big Ten level talent in the Senior, Junior, and Sophomore classes consists of King(barely), Morris(barely), Buggs(barely) and Mason I don't see how you can expect a better record even if John Wooden were coaching. All four of these guys would be reserves on the top 7 teams in the Big Ten.

Next year we will roll out:

PG: Mason, Dorsey, Johnson?
SG: Coffey, Hurt, MacBrayer, Johnson?
SF: Fitzgerald, Buggs, Coffey, Gilbert, Hurt
PF: Murphy, Curry, Diedhiou
C: Lynch, Konate

That will give us 11 out of 13 players who most likely deserve to be on a Big 10 team and hopefully 5 or 6 who have skills to start on an average Big Ten team. Johnson would increase that of course. It's hard to get better when you practice against walk-ons and when your starter is worse than the guy who can't play.

Add that all up and I currently see 7 players on the current eligible team who deserve to be in the Big Ten and most likely only one of which would start on any of the top 7 teams in this conference. Yeah, I think the current record is about right!
 

Call me part of the problem if you must, edging this program to/past mediocrity, refusing to insist on whatever the hell I'm supposed to be thinking I can insist on as a fan to affect an outcome. Excellence?
A close friend I've attended games with for years affirms I said "next year is going to NOT be pretty" last February.
And so it is not. Its ugly.
But its not a joke.

I really feel totally unconcerned about how things are going this year, and while I've been depressed in previous years this isn't the case right now. Let me say it again: I hope we can get through this year without the destruction of the young players's confidence. Now I'll add - the young coach's confidence as well.

I'm a developmental person - I love to see players develop which is why I prefer college BB over pro. I'm a teacher and parent and I've seen more hopeless cases than what we have here now on the floor. I'm also relationship oriented, and I happen to think it matters if I have a foot out the door while someone is trying to do a job. If half the fan base is calling for the firing of a coach (because, gosh, I'm frustrated!) I consider that undermining the program.

I think the U has made good decisions in the past regarding when they moved on. I hope they'll allow this process to play out because...well...I DON'T have a bad feeling about this.

I can understand (although not necessary agree) if you feel the product on the court is not a joke. To me "the joke" is the apathy that has set in amongst the fanbase. There were some non-conf game which had 5000 - 6000 seats filled. There are going to be some conference games with less than 10,000.
 

While I agree that anyone who was paying close attention should have expected a rebuilding year, I don't agree that the record to date should have been expected. If you look at the standings of the top six basketball conferences, the following teams have losing records at this point of the season:

St. John's
DePaul
Minnesota
Rutgers
Boston College

That's 5 of 75 or about 6.7% of the teams in those 6 conferences. I expect that more than 6.7% of power conference basketball teams are going through rebuilding years of some sort.

All of the quantitative ranking indexes employ strength of schedule in their computations. Sagarin, BPI, and Pomeroy employ similar methodologies and so they generally are not too far apart in their rankings. Minnesota is #161 in Sagarin, #158 in Pomeroy, and #154 in BPI. I'll use Sagarin because those openly published results are sorted by conference.

Of the five teams above, Rutgers, St. John's, and Boston College are ranked below the Gophers by Sagarin. If the Gophers are ranked #161 but above the three teams mentioned above, that means the Gophers are ranked lower than 71 power conference teams and 89 mid-major teams. That's really bad for a power conference team.

Wisconsin is clearly going through a rebuilding year; they lost their coach and return only 2 regular rotation players (albeit pretty good ones) from last year's final four team but they are 9-7 and ranked #57. No team in the Big Ten has had more adversity to their roster than Illinois, but they are 8-8 and ranked #103.

Here's a sampling of teams that, at the beginning of the season, I would have been very surprised to trail in ranking at this point:

#128 SUNY Albany
#136 Fordham
#158 North Carolina-Asheville
#160 Cal Poly-SLO
#132 North Carolina-Wilmington
#142 Columbia
#129 Eastern Michigan
#147 Morehead State
#156 Texas A&M-Corpus Christi
#155 IPFW
#106 Georgia State
#157 Cal State Bakersfield

This is good perspective where the program is right now. I expected a rebuilding season in 2015-16 (preseason prediction was 14-16, 5-13 in the B1G), however, I did not expect that rebuild to include a .500 mark in the non-conference schedule with a pair of losses to the Summit League and one to the Horizon League.

Bottom line is if your program is in the same breath/ballpark as Boston College, DePaul, and Rutgers, that's not something to hang your hat on, especially if you're a program that played (and won a game) in the NCAA Tournament as recently as 2013. BC, DePaul, and Rutgers haven't played in the NCAA tourney since 2009, 2004, and 1991, respectively.

And again, so no one goes nutso. This is not a call for Pitino's head, never has been, simply a statement that this season is going far worse than I imagined it could. There's still time to change that, starting with two winnable games (Northwestern, Nebraska) immediately in front of us.
 

Next year we have Coffey replacing Morris, Curry replacing King (has anyone seen his HS stats this year? Seemed to have had a promising trajectory after signing with ratings folks), and Lynch augmenting Konate.. it's going to feel like an eternity to get there, but there is real reason for optimism. Morris is out there doing the best that he can right now, but he's a big part of what makes the offense hard to watch - he doesn't have a feel for playing in an offensive "flow," and Coffey is going to be a good antidote to that after watching him play. There are a lot of complaints that we don't "run an offense" but that's a non-sequitur. It's not like HS where teams are running a flex or something (unless your WI :) ) - high level college players should be to the point where they can run an effective motion within a certain framework, and that's a big part of what Coffey/Curry/Lynch will bring. Coach can draw up all the Xs and Os you want - but bball relies more heavily on creativity and players knowing how to play off each other and find openings, which is hard to teach once a kid gets to the college level and why guys that have as much development as a Coffey are at such a premium.

The criticism of Reusse's article isn't to do with factual inaccuracies - it's his complete lack of vision/solutions/alternatives.
 

Call me part of the problem if you must, edging this program to/past mediocrity, refusing to insist on whatever the hell I'm supposed to be thinking I can insist on as a fan to affect an outcome. Excellence?
A close friend I've attended games with for years affirms I said "next year is going to NOT be pretty" last February.
And so it is not. Its ugly.
But its not a joke.

I really feel totally unconcerned about how things are going this year, and while I've been depressed in previous years this isn't the case right now. Let me say it again: I hope we can get through this year without the destruction of the young players's confidence. Now I'll add - the young coach's confidence as well.

I'm a developmental person - I love to see players develop which is why I prefer college BB over pro. I'm a teacher and parent and I've seen more hopeless cases than what we have here now on the floor. I'm also relationship oriented, and I happen to think it matters if I have a foot out the door while someone is trying to do a job. If half the fan base is calling for the firing of a coach (because, gosh, I'm frustrated!) I consider that undermining the program.

I think the U has made good decisions in the past regarding when they moved on. I hope they'll allow this process to play out because...well...I DON'T have a bad feeling about this.


I can't agree more.

2 years of recruiting is not enough to for a coach to get the players he wants. The fans have a "WIN NOW" attitude and that is just not feasible in most programs, unless your Duke, Kentucky..so on.
 

The comments on here about not worrying and not being concerned bothers me more than our horrible basketball record thus far this season. I think Gopher fans are so used to poor to mediocre sports programs that ones sense of urgency and concern simply doesn't kick in. I'm not saying everyone should jump on the "Fire Coach Pitino NOW!" bandwagon but people need to feel a little more concern and worry.

I think most people are at least a little concerned. I am hopeful he can get things turned around, but I have no idea if he can for sure. I think you can be concerned and optimistic at the same time.

I think, for the most part, there are two different types of Gophers fans:
1. As soon as things go downhill they expect the worse because of our history. More times than not our basketball and football teams have been a disappointment so it is essentially "here we go again".
2. Those that will try to stay positive and optimistic as long as they can because they want to believe this will finally be our time.
 

I think most people are at least a little concerned. I am hopeful he can get things turned around, but I have no idea if he can for sure. I think you can be concerned and optimistic at the same time.

I think, for the most part, there are two different types of Gophers fans:
1. As soon as things go downhill they expect the worse because of our history. More times than not our basketball and football teams have been a disappointment so it is essentially "here we go again".
2. Those that will try to stay positive and optimistic as long as they can because they want to believe this will finally be our time.

I'd add another category:
3. Those that acknowledge it takes time to build a program. Especially when your football team hasn't won the conference since 1967 and the basketball teams most recent success was wiped out by NCAA violations almost 20 years ago.
 

I'd add another category:
3. Those that acknowledge it takes time to build a program. Especially when your football team hasn't won the conference since 1967 and the basketball teams most recent success was wiped out by NCAA violations almost 20 years ago.

This is what bothers me about this line of thinking; is nearly 40 years in football and 20 years in basketball not enough time to build a program? If not, then what is an acceptable time frame? 75 years? 100 years? I guess maybe our grandchildren and great grandchildren can have fun watching winning programs at the U.
 

This is what bothers me about this line of thinking; is nearly 40 years in football and 20 years in basketball not enough time to build a program? If not, then what is an acceptable time frame? 75 years? 100 years? I guess maybe our grandchildren and great grandchildren can have fun watching winning programs at the U.

I may have missed it, when have we given a coach 40 years in football or 20 years in basketball? The point is, you start over everything you fire a coach. Even though the downward trend is disturbing, you don't cut loose this early without major personality or professional red flags.

Judging by your username, you haven't been around to watch many regimes come and go.
 

I will say that I don't believe any coach is going to turn this program around. The issues with Gopher athletics goes much deeper than who the coach is. THIS is honestly why I'm not a fan of the "just give him one more year" and "we need to be patient" mentality. I don't believe for a second Gopher basketball is going to be much better next season. Something's "off" at the U and I'm not sure what it is.
 

This is what bothers me about this line of thinking; is nearly 40 years in football and 20 years in basketball not enough time to build a program? If not, then what is an acceptable time frame? 75 years? 100 years? I guess maybe our grandchildren and great grandchildren can have fun watching winning programs at the U.

Well, Penn State has established a dynasty by having Paterno there for what 40 years.
Indiana basketball had Bobby for nearly 20 years.
Duke and Coach K (in coach K's 2nd year he was 11 and 17 year 3 he was 11-18)
UCLA and Wooden
Florida State and Bobby Bowden
Ohio State with Woody Hayes
Michigan with Schembechler
Michigan State with Izzo
UConn with Jim Calhoun
UNC with Dean Smith
I could go on........

When has Minnesota stuck with a coach long enough to establish a name brand? Dutcher is about the only one I can think of and his brand was nullified by the Wisconsin gang rape incident. Warmath in football?

Did these schools just get lucky or did they let the program build?
 

Well, Penn State has established a dynasty by having Paterno there for what 40 years.
Indiana basketball had Bobby for nearly 20 years.
Duke and Coach K (in coach K's 2nd year he was 11 and 17 year 3 he was 11-18)
UCLA and Wooden
Florida State and Bobby Bowden
Ohio State with Woody Hayes
Michigan with Schembechler
Michigan State with Izzo
UConn with Jim Calhoun
UNC with Dean Smith
I could go on........

When has Minnesota stuck with a coach long enough to establish a name brand? Dutcher is about the only one I can think of and his brand was nullified by the Wisconsin gang rape incident. Warmath in football?

Did these schools just get lucky or did they let the program build?

Clem was here about twice as long as Dutch
 

McHale's replacement was an Assistant at Oregon State, before coming here last year as Director of operations. He has plenty of experience. One could argue he should've gotten a Molinari type, but the no experience argument just isn't true

+1
 




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