Six years ago today the Barn was rocking! 10 Miami vs. 12 Gophers


The Barn will be rocking like this again one day, as far off as it seems now:


Go Gophers!!
I remember sitting in my seat thinking this is awesome we finally got out of the shadow of that stupid scandal. And then no. 25 years later we’re still waiting. I would love nothing more then to see it like that once more. GO GOOHERS
 





That was the best roster the Gophers have had since 97. If Lynch didn't leave the team we would have made a serious Run in the tourney.

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5 years ago today (11/30/2018) the gophers beat Oklahoma State at Usbank stadium. Murphy, Coffey, McBrayer, Kalscheur and Washington in double figures for Richard’s squad.

Also blew them out in 2019 behind 34 from Gabe and 22from Daniel and 11 assists from Carr!
This was a fun game, still remains my only trip to Us Bank stadium
 


That was the best roster the Gophers have had since 97. If Lynch didn't leave the team we would have made a serious Run in the tourney.

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Maybe Lynch left the team, but if he didn’t he would have been officially booted for good reason. That cloud of sexual violence hung over his head before he got here. There is no way he could have continued.
 



Yep, I remember sitting in the stands confused as to why he wasn’t playing. There was no news pregame.

We got our first real long glimpse of Jelly Fam instead.

It all came crumbling down shortly after.
And I had forgot about Jelly Fam. Thanks for nothing.
 


It's easy to forget that the Pitino era had its moments, and he had us in the national rankings multiple times, including his final year, if I recall correctly. It's just that it was so inconsistent and unsustained, and the roster management was a perpetual disaster.
He glued things together better than Ben, but the issues are quite similar.
 

Maybe Lynch left the team, but if he didn’t he would have been officially booted for good reason. That cloud of sexual violence hung over his head before he got here. There is no way he could have continued.
Edinamism! 🫢
 

Yep, I remember sitting in the stands confused as to why he wasn’t playing. There was no news pregame.

We got our first real long glimpse of Jelly Fam instead.

It all came crumbling down shortly after.
Imagine that team but with McKinley Wright instead of Jelly Fam. What could have been.
 


It's easy to forget that the Pitino era had its moments, and he had us in the national rankings multiple times, including his final year, if I recall correctly. It's just that it was so inconsistent and unsustained, and the roster management was a perpetual disaster.

It says a lot about the current state of things that we're reliving the RP era as if it were the glory days. He undoubtedly had his flaws, but he fielded some fun basketball teams.

We're an easy bunch to please. All we want is a full barn and a glimmer of hope.
 


It's easy to forget that the Pitino era had its moments, and he had us in the national rankings multiple times, including his final year, if I recall correctly. It's just that it was so inconsistent and unsustained, and the roster management was a perpetual disaster.
I believe we got as high as #15 or so in January 2021. It collapsed into nothing within two months.
 


Or if he hadn't recruited a couple stiffs at the center position who couldn't play, or if he'd recognized Nate Wolters' talent like some of us did, or if...
Wolters would have been great but that was under Tubby. Class of 2009. Instead of Wolters Tubby recruited Justin Cobbs who also had a pretty good college career. Just it was at Cal and not at Minnesota. Just looked Cobbs up and it looks like he is still playing overseas.
 

Or if he hadn't recruited a couple stiffs at the center position who couldn't play, or if he'd recognized Nate Wolters' talent like some of us did, or if...
Wright was a lot more of a first guess than Wolters. Certainly Konate was a reach and dad sold him a bill of goods on one of the other ones.
 

Wright was a lot more of a first guess than Wolters. Certainly Konate was a reach and dad sold him a bill of goods on one of the other ones.
We got the African players through a school or camp operated by someone connected with the Pitino family. Some controversy with them. I suspect that may have been the reason Gaston hung around so long.
 

He glued things together better than Ben, but the issues are quite similar.
Pitino's issue was that his offensive strategy was to simply force the ball to his best players at all costs. Sometimes, those guys played well enough to get the Gophers into the Top 25. But the lack of any identity prevented his teams from achieving any long-term consistency. I'm seeing the same issue from Johnson, made even worse by not having anywhere near the talent of Pitino's best guys.
 

Wolters would have been great but that was under Tubby. Class of 2009. Instead of Wolters Tubby recruited Justin Cobbs who also had a pretty good college career. Just it was at Cal and not at Minnesota. Just looked Cobbs up and it looks like he is still playing overseas.
Thanks for the correction.

Cobbs was good, true, but I'd still have taken Nate.
 

This was a huge missed opportunity in the Pitino era. When you've been in the chair for 4 years and you are somehow just getting your first big ranked vs ranked home game...you really need to win it. Things went South quickly (and probably would have anyway given we now know that Coyle/Pitino were aware of the Lynch matter for months prior to it becoming public). After losing this game and a win over Rutgers, we got blown out at Nebraska and at Arkansas in the same week and were unranked. I belive we were not ranked again from the poll after the Arkansas loss until Pitino's final year. Someone earlier in this thread said Pitino had us in the polls, but we were almost completely irrelevant during his time here. I belive we were only ranked for like a total of 8-10 weeks through the entirety of his 8 year tenure. The majority of that was to open that 5th season through the loss to Arkansas.

The game after that loss to Arkansas? The really ugly home win vs Drake and Niko Medved 68-67.

According to Wikipedia, We opened that 17-18 season at #15 and got to #12 against #10 Miami. Fell to #14 after that loss and then were unranked the next week after the bad losses to Nebraska and Arkansas. The next time we were ranked was in the first poll after Christmas 2020 in Pitino's final season following the win over Iowa at #21. We then beat #17 MSU, lost at #6 Wisconsin beat #25 Ohio State, moved up to #16 in the rankings, got blown out at #10 Michigan and #5 Iowa, fell to #23, then blew out #7 Michigan at home, rose to #17 then we'd get blown out at home against Maryland and at Purdue to drop out of the rankings and put the cherry on the top of the 3 game losing streak by losing at Rutgers. That last year of Pitino was so strange because I never felt we were good yet we had these home blowout wins over highly ranked teams. The road games were consistently atrocious which was especially strange since that was the year of no attendance because of COVID-19 and it seemed like when the first bad loss to an unranked Maryland team happened at home that the wheels came off. This was before the injuries to Robbins/Kalscheur where it seemed like everybody associated with the program just quit. I believe those injuries happened around the time of the game at Maryland which started a 7(!) game losing streak to end the regular season which included only 1 ranked team and the last four were Northwestern, Nebraska, Penn State, and Rutgers,..talk about going out with a bang.
 

We got the African players through a school or camp operated by someone connected with the Pitino family. Some controversy with them. I suspect that may have been the reason Gaston hung around so long.
Pitino is mobbed up
 




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