To recap, the following 7 Gophers have put their name in the Transfer Portal

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Ozzy&Ray said:
We don’t have a player like that, so we don’t know that Ben tried to convince anyone. My guess is he was simply honest with guys about what he’s seen and what he needs - no promises, as none of them really deserve it.
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So you are saying Ben is going to replace them with better players? By the time the season starts we will have more talent than this past year?
 



As the old saying goes “Be careful what you wish for”. You wished Pitino would get fired and he did. Now you have a coach you did not wish for who has never been a head coach, you have all the current players jumping ship, and things are looking quite dismal for next season in my opinion. But at least we have a new coach.
 

jblass said:
As the old saying goes “Be careful what you wish for”. You wished Pitino would get fired and he did. Now you have a coach you did not wish for who has never been a head coach, you have all the current players jumping ship, and things are looking quite dismal for next season in my opinion. But at least we have a new coach.
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Pitino should have been fired, he earned it after allowing his top 20 ranked team to completely collapse. What most had not considered was a "search committee" being used to make the hire along with the external pressures provided by the local media and B1G.
 


Gopher Teeth said:
So you are saying Ben is going to replace them with better players? By the time the season starts we will have more talent than this past year?
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Who knows? I don’t think it’s beyond the realm of possibility. We will see. Its early in the process
 

jblass said:
As the old saying goes “Be careful what you wish for”. You wished Pitino would get fired and he did. Now you have a coach you did not wish for who has never been a head coach, you have all the current players jumping ship, and things are looking quite dismal for next season in my opinion. But at least we have a new coach.
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These were players who finished in 13th place and some who seemed to stop caring half way through the season. Let the new era begin.
 

GopherBlood666 said:
What most had not considered was a "search committee" being used to make the hire along with the external pressures provided by the local media and B1G.
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Not just external pressures like the local media and the conference; probably the greater pressures came from internal sources (both within the university and higher education in Minnesota in general).

I thought of the same thing you mentioned during this coaching search. There are a fair number of unsophisticated posters here who don't understand where an AD fits in the grand scheme of things within a university and they're not particularly cognizant of the fact that there are forces other than "getting your guy" and "winning" that play into outcomes. ADs aren't pro GMs.

When I heard the term "diversity gap" in the press releases, I took notice. If they just wanted to make a diversity hire, they could have hired an existing HC of color (like Gates). What they did was make a move to address the diversity gap by elevating a man who was an assistant coach for many years but had not been selected as a head coach. Penn State did something similar with Shrewsberry although technically he was head coach of a small NAIA school briefly last decade. PSU actually is in worse shape than us. They lost almost all of their roster talent and I don't see any transfer commits listed for them yet. They also had 3 freshman recruits decommit months ago.
 

Johnnyboy18 said:
These were players who finished in 13th place and some who seemed to stop caring half way through the season. Let the new era begin.
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I won't go quite that far. They looked like they were playing pretty hard to me in some of those late season games.

But, I do agree with your general point: let the new era begin. If we're going to have a bad team in the near future, I'd rather watch a bad team with new players and a new coach.
 



jblass said:
As the old saying goes “Be careful what you wish for”. You wished Pitino would get fired and he did. Now you have a coach you did not wish for who has never been a head coach, you have all the current players jumping ship, and things are looking quite dismal for next season in my opinion. But at least we have a new coach.
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Whether or not we should have fired Pitino, and whether we made a good hire are two different questions. Pitino's record was bad enough that I am shocked we held off on firing him for as long as we did, and I think if results and performance matters at all it is difficult to argue we should not have fired him.

As with all coaches, I think we should evaluate Ben Johnson himself (and by extension the quality of Coyle's decision to hire him) by how he does in the win/loss column and postseason play, not how excited I am about his resume or his off-season roster moves. If we have a coach who was a hot commodity, and I am excited about, but ends up falling flat on his face on the court, that is a bad hire. If we hire someone I've never heard of, and he turns us into perennial contenders, that is an awesome hire.
 

bleedsmaroonandgold said:
Whether or not we should have fired Pitino, and whether we made a good hire are two different questions. Pitino's record was bad enough that I am shocked we held off on firing him for as long as we did, and I think if results and performance matters at all it is difficult to argue we should not have fired him.

As with all coaches, I think we should evaluate Ben Johnson himself (and by extension the quality of Coyle's decision to hire him) by how he does in the win/loss column and postseason play, not how excited I am about his resume or his off-season roster moves. If we have a coach who was a hot commodity, and I am excited about, but ends up falling flat on his face on the court, that is a bad hire. If we hire someone I've never heard of, and he turns us into perennial contenders, that is an awesome hire.
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Agreed, but we can have opinions now and thoughts on where this is all going to go. There isn't much to talk about if we all just wait to see what happens.
 

Gopher Teeth said:
It’s a low bar and we won’t achieve it, so what does that tell you?
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Actually, I won't shed a tear if any or all of them leave... I'm actually looking forward to a new team. The players Johnson has brought in, so far, look promising... That transfer portal door opens both ways, and we're going to see more come our way.
 

There have been a few rumors but none of the our guys who have gone into the portal have found a new school yet (at least according to the transfer portal on 247). Will be interesting to see how many of them find new homes given all the names in the portal across the board.

Will be interesting to see how many of them are able to land new gigs in a major conference and how many have to drop way down to find a spot.
 



GopherBlood666 said:
Pitino should have been fired, he earned it after allowing his top 20 ranked team to completely collapse. What most had not considered was a "search committee" being used to make the hire along with the external pressures provided by the local media and B1G.
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How could people have not considered the inevitable committee at the U? That's what they do over there. Winning is down the list of priorities. That doesn't say we won't win...we might. But if we do it will be in spite of the process and the people over at the U.
 

bga1 said:
How could people have not considered the inevitable committee at the U? That's what they do over there. Winning is down the list of priorities. That doesn't say we won't win...we might. But if we do it will be in spite of the process and the people over at the U.
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When you have an inferior AD, I wholeheartedly expect it. I did not account for Gabels in this scenario which was a failure on my behalf.
 

GopherBlood666 said:
When you have an inferior AD, I wholeheartedly expect it. I did not account for Gabels in this scenario which was a failure on my behalf.
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You were correct that she should not have been involved. But when the politically correct/woke crowd gets involved all bets are off at an institution like the U. Their alumni letters are littered with this crap.
 



bga1 said:
You were correct that she should not have been involved. But when the politically correct/woke crowd gets involved all bets are off at an institution like the U. Their alumni letters are littered with this crap.
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It’s all how you look at it. I’m just pretending we did a self imposed 5 year postseason ban. It should buy us into NCAA’s good graces in the future.😉
 

Gopher Teeth said:
That doesn't seem much worse, but it could be a lot worse. This year's team only lost 4 games at home. If there were fans, they would have enjoyed 13 wins, and only 4 losses in person, quite a few of those wins were against ranked opponents. That is an enjoyable night. That will not happen next year, I would say that it will feel much worse than 1 one spot drop in the standings.
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You have no idea who will end up on our team yet next year....why don't you just relax and see what happens.
 

kix4kix said:
*Inevitable

We had two pros who were essentially never injured and we sucked. We now have 0 future pros lol
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Well, going back in Gophers' history, the team had a lottery pick in 2004 who led the conference in scoring and rebounding as a freshman and subsequently had a long NBA career. The team also had 4 top 100 recruits (including the aforementioned player). That team finished 12-18.

The following year's team had no NBA players and only one top 100 recruit. That team finished 21-11.
 

kix4kix said:
*Inevitable

We had two pros who were essentially never injured and we sucked. We now have 0 future pros lol
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I agree we’ll see a really rough year unless we work some transfer portal magic.

Two pros is overstating the talent, they had a single 3rd team B1G player. That’s not going to cut it.
 

cjbfbp said:
Well, going back in Gophers' history, the team had a lottery pick in 2004 who led the conference in scoring and rebounding as a freshman and subsequently had a long NBA career. The team also had 4 top 100 recruits (including the aforementioned player). That team finished 12-18.

The following year's team had no NBA players and only one top 100 recruit. That team finished 21-11.
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So what you're saying is recruiting high level players doesn't matter as much as high level coaching.
 
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You cant recruit the high level players until your coach has built a winning team without them. The way I see it BJ has 3-4 years to win a game in the NCAA tournament, then he'd be worthy of an extension. God I hope this isn't another swing and a miss.
 

Gopher Teeth said:
So what you're saying is recruiting high level players doesn't matter as much as high level coaching.
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Maybe but that message wasn't my intention. I wasn't trying to offer any lessons other than a presumably less talented team can have a better season than a presumably more talented one.
 






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