Still have faith in Pitino?

[jovs]

It's a learning experience, I expect him to adjust to the B1G, he's just past halfway of his second year, let's see where things are three years.

 

[cjbfbp]

I Pitino has learned a style of play from his dad and Billy Donovan and it's one that works, but only works when you have the right players. He doesn't have that here. He hasn't adjusted and on one hand it's his fault, but on the other he's never known anything else. I'm pretty discouraged right now but I'm not about to run him off either.

I don't think coaches who can only play one way and have difficulty adjusting to an environment that isn't conducive to that merit Big Ten levels of compensation. In his defense, I will say that his first year went well enough that his assumptions weren't challenged enough to motivate much in the way of adjustments. This year has been different. We'll see where he goes from here.

As far as running him off, well, there won't be nearly enough public sentiment to do that unless next year is a complete failure (losing record) and then his seat might be pretty hot in the following year. I think the NIT championship probably earned him a minimum of four years.

 

[Dano564]

I laugh and laugh when you discount ENTIRE seasons based on one game over 6 YEARS. This year's meltdown is quite reminiscent of several seasons we put up with in the last regime, perhaps you should go back and review those seasons to compare to this one. If the NCAA is all you care about, why pay attention to the season at all? Winning consistently in the B1G is much much harder than winning one tournament game against a barely average team with no heart or discipline.

Tubby had his shot, one game wasn't enough to justify what he was getting paid. The product he consistently put on the floor was brutal to watch game after game.

The slowest nights on offense now still beat the Tubby-sponsored, stand around offense.
We actually seem to have a plan on how to attack a zone defense now.

I think it's an issue of players. I'm not sold on any of the freshmen outside of Mason.
He needs to bring in better players than this to win consistently.

 

[Go4]

The worst coach in college basketball history took a 9-win team to the Tournament in his 2nd year.

once again the king of hyperbole (who has said he doesn't use hyperbole) once again uses hyperbole!

 

[cjbfbp]

The slowest nights on offense now still beat the Tubby-sponsored, stand around offense.
We actually seem to have a plan on how to attack a zone defense now.

.

I watched Tubby's Texas Tech team against Baylor a couple of nights ago. They're young but they have definitely have some potential. Right now I'd bet that Tubby has a better team than Pitino next year.

 

[dpodoll68]

once again the king of hyperbole (who has said he doesn't use hyperbole) once again uses hyperbole!

Are you the President of Presiding at the Department of Redundancy Department?

 

[scher215]

I laugh and laugh when I think about how making the Tournament and winning a game there was cast aside as meaningless by this fan base. The worst coach in college basketball history took a 9-win team to the Tournament in his 2nd year. This coach's 2nd year? CBI, here we come! I can't wait!

I usually agree with what you post. But you were someone who during the Tubby years said you were a Gopher fan who supported Tubby as the Gophers coach and I was right there with you.

Now you've become the BarnBurner of the Pitino era, looking for any chance to dump on the current coach just to prop up "your guy"

I liked Tubby. Could have absolutely understood bringing him back. But celebrating failure by Pitino and this season just to say "I told you so" is not something I can get on board with.

 

[dpodoll68]

I laugh and laugh when you discount ENTIRE seasons based on one game over 6 YEARS.

That season had to be good enough to get to the Tournament. I'm not discounting anything. I enjoyed winning games and getting to the Tournament. Oh, and also winning a game there. "One game" is better than "zero games". You'd rather have this season than the 2012-13 season? That "one game" is more Tournament wins than Pitino has won (or even coached in) for his entire career.

This year's meltdown is quite reminiscent of several seasons we put up with in the last regime, perhaps you should go back and review those seasons to compare to this one.

Gladly. You'd rather have this season than 3 Tournament appearances in 6 seasons?

If the NCAA is all you care about, why pay attention to the season at all?

Um, because they have to play the season in order to get to the Tournament? Were you not aware of that? Nobody gets an automatic bye or gets grandfathered in.

Winning consistently in the B1G is much much harder than winning one tournament game against a barely average team with no heart or discipline.

Fantastic. Pitino has done neither. Let me know when Pitino wins "one tournament game against a barely average team with no heart or discipline." Oh, that's right - he'd have to get there first.

Tubby had his shot, one game wasn't enough to justify what he was getting paid.

The salary is a red herring. You'd all have run him out of town if he were getting paid $500 k.

The product he consistently put on the floor was brutal to watch game after game.

Smith's Big Ten record through 2 seasons: 17-19 (.472)
Pitino's Big Ten record through (slightly less than) 2 seasons: 13-19 (.406)

If Smith's product was "brutal", what is Pitino's? Extra-brutal? Brutal-plus?

 

[dpodoll68]

But celebrating failure by Pitino and this season just to say "I told you so" is not something I can get on board with.

I'm not celebrating failure at all. I hate it. I've hated most of this season. Luckily for me, we're 3-0 in games I've attended, so that's the silver lining for me personally. I wish we were 14-0, or at least in position to make the Tournament. I wish I weren't in a position to remind the board of everyone's arrogance and hubris, guaranteeing that we could do so much better than the previous coach, regardless of who the hire would be. Unfortunately, here we are.

 

[Winasota Gopher]

This website absolutely sucks right now. It is almost completely devoid of logic and almost entirely consisting of extremism and overreaction (This post likely included in said extremism/overreaction). Those that see the flaws of the current roster and the reason of the dismissal of current coaches predecessor yet hang onto their expectations of "win now or die" frustrate me. Those that claim the current coach is terrible despite some very evident evidence to the contrary are frustrating as well. And what I cannot stand the most is the almost instantaneous 180 some people pull when we win a game we maybe should not have or lose a game we should have won. The opinions of players and personnel changing on the result of a missed layup or open jumper.... Yikes.

Am I upset that we lost last night? Absolutely. Do I have some trepidation about the regression of the current roster? For sure. Has it changed my faith/optimism in Pitino's vision of where he wants to take this program? Not yet. There are very few correlations we should be drawing from the results/efforts of the current team to what we should expect down the road, or at least applying a severe discount to said results due to not enough time and or terrible roster make-up (some organic, some inherited). I've said, with some ridicule, that it's 6 years minimum for a coach to install a program and turn one around. I firmly believe that. In YEAR 4 we will start to see the true form of what he wants in this program. In YEAR 5 he will have his first players that went through the system start to finish and in year 6 he will have his first real recruits hit the floor as seniors.

Tubby's short straw and or the validity of his dismissal are irrelevant in this conversation and those that bring his name up in this conversation are equally frustrating. It's just frustrating that this board cannot have a candid conversation about the things you're seeing today that upset you and not go off on 10 tangents about how big of a disaster (HYPERBOLE TO THE MAX) this season has been.

The answer I'll likely receive is then well go somewhere else. Well I live in Wisconsin and know 0 die hard Gopher fans, so this has been for the last 4 years my location for inside info on recruits and sometime quality conversation about the direction of my favorite squad.

 

[BleedGopher]

This website absolutely sucks right now. It is almost completely devoid of logic and almost entirely consisting of extremism and overreaction (This post likely included in said extremism/overreaction). Those that see the flaws of the current roster and the reason of the dismissal of current coaches predecessor yet hang onto their expectations of "win now or die" frustrate me. Those that claim the current coach is terrible despite some very evident evidence to the contrary are frustrating as well. And what I cannot stand the most is the almost instantaneous 180 some people pull when we win a game we maybe should not have or lose a game we should have won. The opinions of players and personnel changing on the result of a missed layup or open jumper.... Yikes.

Am I upset that we lost last night? Absolutely. Do I have some trepidation about the regression of the current roster? For sure. Has it changed my faith/optimism in Pitino's vision of where he wants to take this program? Not yet. There are very few correlations we should be drawing from the results/efforts of the current team to what we should expect down the road, or at least applying a severe discount to said results due to not enough time and or terrible roster make-up (some organic, some inherited). I've said, with some ridicule, that it's 6 years minimum for a coach to install a program and turn one around. I firmly believe that. In YEAR 4 we will start to see the true form of what he wants in this program. In YEAR 5 he will have his first players that went through the system start to finish and in year 6 he will have his first real recruits hit the floor as seniors.

Tubby's short straw and or the validity of his dismissal are irrelevant in this conversation and those that bring his name up in this conversation are equally frustrating. It's just frustrating that this board cannot have a candid conversation about the things you're seeing today that upset you and not go off on 10 tangents about how big of a disaster (HYPERBOLE TO THE MAX) this season has been.

The answer I'll likely receive is then well go somewhere else. Well I live in Wisconsin and know 0 die hard Gopher fans, so this has been for the last 4 years my location for inside info on recruits and sometime quality conversation about the direction of my favorite squad.

Sports brings out emotion and dramatic shifts in said emotion. That is nothing new and certainly not unique to Minnesota. This board is tame compared to most as is our fan base. You should have heard KU fans' opinions of Roy Williams after they lost in the Round of 32 one year. A few years later 16,000 people showed up at his press conference to cheer him on that he was staying at the school they wanted to run him out of a few years prior. Gopher football fans were hanging Murray Warmath in effigy a year before he won the national title. This has been happening for decades. Winning is more fun than losing.

Go Gophers!!

 

[StCroix]

How is continuously dribbling into a turn over or throwing the ball away the coaches fault? Go watch the game, and watch some of the guys actions. You don't win games turning it over the WAY we do...especially when a lot of those actions are performed by our "seasoned veterans".

I can't believe how short sighted some of the "fans" on this forum are.

Ski-U-Mah

 

[BleedGopher]

How is continuously dribbling into a turn over or throwing the ball away the coaches fault? Go watch the game, and watch some of the guys actions. You don't win games turning it over the WAY we do...especially when a lot of those actions are performed by our "seasoned veterans".

I can't believe how short sighted some of the "fans" on this forum are.

Ski-U-Mah

We had 10 turnovers last night, that's not bad at all. Not sure why you are choosing that as the example.

Also not sure why people use "fans" like that when they disagree with others opinions. We've lost to Northwestern at home two years in a row, that's frustrating for most fans (with our without the " "). Of course there are some going way over the top (sonny, nasa) but most of our fans expected more than what we're seeing this year. We are also only getting production out of one freshman, so fans are understandably concerned that while we're not winning this year, we're not building towards a lot either this year. It feels like a lost year in both those regards. Ideally you do both (win and build) but at a minimum you gotta do at least one or the other. This year it appears as if we're doing neither (in scale - obviously there are outliers like Mason and Buggs to a lesser degree).

Go Gophers!!

 

[scools12]

We have a head coach and a staff that is basically learning on the job. It can be argued that the B1G is no place for on the job training but that is where we are at.

Teague made the decision to go this way and I would expected he envisioned growing pains. Next year looks like it will be tough and if patience is already growing thin after year 2 imagine what this board will be like next year.

Coach and staff need to make some strides over the next 2 years on what this program is trying to accomplish and hopefully they will be able to put together recruiting classes and a team that can compete yearly for a spot in the upper half of the B1G.

 

[Bad Gopher]

I watched Tubby's Texas Tech team against Baylor a couple of nights ago. They're young but they have definitely have some potential. Right now I'd bet that Tubby has a better team than Pitino next year.

That'll be interesting to see. I like Tubby, so I'll always be paying attention to how his teams do.

This talk about giving up on Pitino is very premature. You never want to make a coaching decision based on the outcome of one season. His first two teams overachieved, and this is his first underachieving team. Every coach has had them.

I don't wear maroon-colored goggles when I look at our players. This is not a talent rich team. Even our best players have major shortcomings. And then Martin wasn't what we'd hoped he was and McNeil got in trouble and dropped out. Rich has done a decent job recruiting, but he needs to do better. Next year's ranked class is a good start, but it has to be something to build on, not rest on.

The more I think about it, the more I realize how much Austin Hollins is missed. He was not an all-conference player, but he was an excellent defender, capable of negating the other team's all-conference player, and that's monstrous. Carlos is not a good defender, so he simply cannot and does not replace Austin. Replacing Austin needed to be a team effort - everyone getting a little better and making up for his loss by committee - and it hasn't happened.

 

[Winasota Gopher]

Sports brings out emotion and dramatic shifts in said emotion. That is nothing new and certainly not unique to Minnesota. This board is tame compared to most as is our fan base. You should have heard KU fans' opinions of Roy Williams after they lost in the Round of 32 one year. A few years later 16,000 people showed up at his press conference to cheer him on that he was staying at the school they wanted to run him out of a few years prior. Gopher football fans were hanging Murray Warmath in effigy a year before he won the national title. This has been happening for decades. Winning is more fun than losing.

Go Gophers!!

With all due respect Bleed, Kansas might not be the best example. Gopher fans on this board seem to have some sort of entitlement and false sense of what our program is or where it was headed 2 years ago. Expectations are not appropriately set and response to failed inflated exactions are erratic and immature at best.

Being passionate is not what I'm frustrated at, it's that there are numerous crazy extremes that come out after wins and losses. People that will say this team is full of senior talent in on post and proclaim NCAA or bust, and in the very next post claim said senior is not a d1 player. Some get mad at our new coach for not having a stid 4 on the roster as if he didn't recruit multiple 4s and had numerous extenuating circumstances limit the ability of getting a 4 on the roster.

It's the irrational extremes that make it unreadable.

 

[BleedGopher]

With all due respect Bleed, Kansas might not be the best example. Gopher fans on this board seem to have some sort of entitlement and false sense of what our program is or where it was headed 2 years ago. Expectations are not appropriately set and response to failed inflated exactions are erratic and immature at best.

Being passionate is not what I'm frustrated at, it's the fact that there are numerous people that will say this team is full of senior talent in on post and proclaim NCAA or bust, and in the very next post claim said senior is not a d1 player. Some get mad at our new coach for not having a stid 4 on the roster as if he didn't recruit multiple 4s and had numerous extenuating circumstances limit the ability of getting a 4 on the roster.

It's the irrational extremes that piss me off.

Fair points.

Though we are coming off a bad loss at home to a bad Northwestern team, that we've now lost to two years in a row at home. Obviously that is unacceptable and can't continue to happen. We need better coaching and better players.

As I've stated before, I firmly believe that Richard Pitino is a guy who will take his team to the Final Four, likely multiple Final Four's in his career. My fear all along has been that he'll do it at another school and will look back at this experience as the school that he really took his lumps at and learned from, not the program that he won big with. I hope I'm wrong, but that is my fear.

Go Gophers!!

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

With all due respect Bleed, Kansas might not be the best example. Gopher fans on this board seem to have some sort of entitlement and false sense of what our program is or where it was headed 2 years ago. Expectations are not appropriately set and response to failed inflated exactions are erratic and immature at best.

Being passionate is not what I'm frustrated at, it's that there are numerous crazy extremes that come out after wins and losses. People that will say this team is full of senior talent in on post and proclaim NCAA or bust, and in the very next post claim said senior is not a d1 player. Some get mad at our new coach for not having a stid 4 on the roster as if he didn't recruit multiple 4s and had numerous extenuating circumstances limit the ability of getting a 4 on the roster.

It's the irrational extremes that make it unreadable.

There are some irrational extremes out there. At the same time, we have only seen two Pitino seasons so far. Right now, pending a pretty impressive finish, it is likely that Pitino will have taken this team a step backwards in both of them. When you fire a coach for poor performance, you expect to see improvement and not regression.

 

[e.bigelow]

Fair points.

Though we are coming off a bad loss at home to a bad Northwestern team, that we've now lost to two years in a row at home. Obviously that is unacceptable and can't continue to happen. We need better coaching and better players.

As I've stated before, I firmly believe that Richard Pitino is a guy who will take his team to the Final Four, likely multiple Final Four's in his career. My fear all along has been that he'll do it at another school and will look back at this experience as the school that he really took his lumps at and learned from, not the program that he won big with. I hope I'm wrong, but that is my fear.

Go Gophers!!

While I may not neccesarily agree with the bold, Bleed. I do think RP is the guy we need here. Though this season as gone into a bad downward spiral, I think he just needs time to get his players in here to fully implement his system. I think we are seeing more of his system this year than last with the increased uptempo play. Unfortunately, he is trying to fit a square peg in a round hole with the current roster and upper classmen we have right now. They are just not players that are, in a perfect world, ideally fit to play in this kind of system. Give it some time to get his players that he recruits to fit his system and I think he will get us where we need to be.

 

[scools12]

Fair points.

Though we are coming off a bad loss at home to a bad Northwestern team, that we've now lost to two years in a row at home. Obviously that is unacceptable and can't continue to happen. We need better coaching and better players.

As I've stated before, I firmly believe that Richard Pitino is a guy who will take his team to the Final Four, likely multiple Final Four's in his career. My fear all along has been that he'll do it at another school and will look back at this experience as the school that he really took his lumps at and learned from, not the program that he won big with. I hope I'm wrong, but that is my fear.

Go Gophers!!

Before Pitino can get an opportunity to take another program to a Final Four he is going to need success at Minnesota. More than likely success in the NCAA tourney.

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

Before Pitino can get an opportunity to take another program to a Final Four he is going to need success at Minnesota. More than likely success in the NCAA tourney.

I've said this before, but I am pretty sure I remember people expressing fear of Mason, Brewster, Kill, Tubby, and Pitino all leaving for better coaching jobs. So far, not one of those coaches has left the school voluntarily and three were fired for poor performance. I have almost no fear of Pitino getting hired away, and if he does, I think it will be because he has led us to a level of success which will put us in great position for whoever replaces him.

 

[Moonlight]

I know an awful lot about the team to just be a football fan; could it be {gasp}, that I'm a fan of both? If you still see hope in this situation you are a kool aid drinker. There is hope of a nice back court with Mason and Dorsey, but JJ is a short combo guard with a questionable shot. Mcbrayer can score, but can you play the 3 in the big ten at 170 lbs? No one else really wanted JN, so I'll just hold out hope he can be a serviceable piece. There is nothing 3 thru 5 on this roster. We will still have to recruit something there if we want any level of productivity. The two Africans will never amount to anything and JN seems to be a solid defensive presence with limited offensive capability.

Nah, you're just a critic of both. But for some people thats the most entertaining part. There is something between a koolaid drinker and hopeless negativity.

Feel free to post here only when you hate what's going on but don't pretend that's not what's going on!

 

[jamiche]

Before Pitino can get an opportunity to take another program to a Final Four he is going to need success at Minnesota. More than likely success in the NCAA tourney.

I have no fear of Pitino leaving. Somebody else young and hungry would take the job.

I don't think he needs to take MN to the tourney to get a better, though maybe not elite, job. He could leave tomorrow and get a top 15 job because of his name, connections and communication skills. He can blame this season on Tubby and no practice facility.

 

[Winasota Gopher]

Fair points.

Though we are coming off a bad loss at home to a bad Northwestern team, that we've now lost to two years in a row at home. Obviously that is unacceptable and can't continue to happen. We need better coaching and better players.

As I've stated before, I firmly believe that Richard Pitino is a guy who will take his team to the Final Four, likely multiple Final Four's in his career. My fear all along has been that he'll do it at another school and will look back at this experience as the school that he really took his lumps at and learned from, not the program that he won big with. I hope I'm wrong, but that is my fear.

Go Gophers!!

And the bolded is what gets me. The SAME TEAM beat Iowa, the SAME flawed team. How people can watch this team lose to Maryland, Michigan, PSU, all in pant dropping fashion, forget and have the same vitriol and surprise that this is such a bad team at the end of EVERY disappointing loss is just maddening. At SOME POINT it should have set in that this isn't that good of a team, and we should be able to get past the extremes and just have some level headed discussion about the things that scare us. Did something different happen against NW that you didn't see in our PSU game? I mean they were pretty similar no show performances weren't they? Yet we pulled up the thread from the PSU game, rinse and repeat with the same disappointment comments about how this is such a good team and we deserve better, or how this is such a bad coach and we should punt on the experiment.

 

[Winasota Gopher]

There are some irrational extremes out there. At the same time, we have only seen two Pitino seasons so far. Right now, pending a pretty impressive finish, it is likely that Pitino will have taken this team a step backwards in both of them. When you fire a coach for poor performance, you expect to see improvement and not regression.

And I think that is exactly why we pulled the trigger on Tubby. The decline was coming, instead of waiting for Tubby to fail, (maybe he would have righted the ship, we'll never know) Teague pulled the trigger and hired someone who he thought could change the culture with and sell his facilities agenda with (was Pitino his plan A? Don't know). That takes time, and likely accelerated the decline. Rather than 2-3 years of failure from the predecessor we get it with the new coach. I don't think that's a terrible or rational way to look at where we are today.

If you're setting the bar at NCAA round 2 and anything after that is regression, I guess we're going to disagree simply based on one person is operating on "facts" and the other is making subjective assumptions on the inevitable fall of the program.

 

[MaroonGold1]

I have no fear of Pitino leaving. Somebody else young and hungry would take the job.

I don't think he needs to take MN to the tourney to get a better, though maybe not elite, job. He could leave tomorrow and get a top 15 job because of his name, connections and communication skills. He can blame this season on Tubby and no practice facility.

Top 15 job???? Lets see, here's a quick list... Which of these schools is Pitino leaving for this spring?

Duke
UNC
Louisville
Kansas
Arizona
Michigan St
Ohio St.
Indiana
Syracuse
UCLA
Kentucky
Florida
Texas
Villanova
Michigan

 

[howeda7]

I have no fear of Pitino leaving. Somebody else young and hungry would take the job.

I don't think he needs to take MN to the tourney to get a better, though maybe not elite, job. He could leave tomorrow and get a top 15 job because of his name, connections and communication skills. He can blame this season on Tubby and no practice facility.

No he couldn't. He could get a job at Auburn or LSU, etc. Just like Tubby could have. But he won't, because those are worse jobs than MN.

 

[cjbfbp]

No he couldn't. He could get a job at Auburn or LSU, etc. Just like Tubby could have. But he won't, because those are worse jobs than MN.

Auburn just hired Bruce Pearl last spring for $2 million a year. I'm not sure that's a worse job.

 

[bleedsmaroonandgold]

And I think that is exactly why we pulled the trigger on Tubby. The decline was coming, instead of waiting for Tubby to fail, (maybe he would have righted the ship, we'll never know) Teague pulled the trigger and hired someone who he thought could change the culture with and sell his facilities agenda with (was Pitino his plan A? Don't know). That takes time, and likely accelerated the decline. Rather than 2-3 years of failure from the predecessor we get it with the new coach. I don't think that's a terrible or rational way to look at where we are today.

If you're setting the bar at NCAA round 2 and anything after that is regression, I guess we're going to disagree simply based on one person is operating on "facts" and the other is making subjective assumptions on the inevitable fall of the program.

Last year I set the bar at NCAA round 2 and anything after that was regression. This year, NIT championship was the bar to assess whether or not we have again regressed, and we shall see how we match up against that standard when the dust settles. I have been wrong so many times about the direction of various Minnesota pro and college teams (both optimistic and pessimistic) that I don't believe in "inevitable falls".

 

[Winasota Gopher]

Last year I set the bar at NCAA round 2 and anything after that was regression. This year, NIT championship was the bar to assess whether or not we have again regressed, and we shall see how we match up against that standard when the dust settles. I have been wrong so many times about the direction of various Minnesota pro and college teams (both optimistic and pessimistic) that I don't believe in "inevitable falls".

So yes, we will not see eye to eye on this.