After a disappointing season, which saw the Gopher men’s basketball team go 18-15 and 6-10 in conference, Head Coach Richard Pitino is looking forward to a fresh start.
Pitino met with members of the media Tuesday to talk about his team and the expectations he has as the team gets ready for a trip to Spain.
Pitino on Kevin Dorsey: He is a lighting quick point guard. He’s got the type of speed that DeAndre Mathieu has. He can go bye anybody, very good passer, needs to improve his shooting, great defender, but takes a few too many risks. Probably got away with that at another age, but a fun player to watch. Main thing he needs to work on is his shooting, something we’ve been working on.
Pitino on Dupree McBrayer: Really like his game a lot. He’s multi-dimensional, can do everything, scores the basketball, similar to Carlos Morris, doesn’t take as many bad shots as Carlos Morris does, but some similarities there.
Pitino on Ahmad Gilbert: He’s gotta be 6’5”, shooter, he came in in not great shape and he’s gotten in better shape. He’s been playing much better since he’s got in better shape and we’re excited about the length he brings.
Pitino on Jordan Murphy: Jordan Murphy we’re very excited about. He’s been playing mostly power forward spot for us, but he can guard multiple positions. Extremely excited about him, he’s got great leadership qualities. So I think he’ll be ready to contribute right away, he’s been making Joey (King) better; Joey’s been making him better.
Pitino on the two transfers Reggie Lynch and Davonte Fitzgerald: I think they’ll make an immediate impact next year. They’re two of the better players on the team this year, unfortunately they can’t play this year, but I do think that those two guys will help a lot next year.
Pitino on Jarvis Johnson: There’s never been one day where he’s let off that he’s feeling sorry for himself in any way. He is on the sidelines, loud voice, wants to be as involved as possible. I told him to get as involved as you want to and he’s been great at that.
Pitino on playing Nate Mason and Kevin Dorsey together: That’s kinda something we’ve been tinkering with. I like Nate on the court, but he can’t play 40 minutes at the one (point guard) and I don’t think Kevin can play the two (shooting guard) cause of his height, so I do think they’ll play together. They will play together, how much I’m not sure yet, but I think they’ll be a good combination together. I think Kevin really get’s a lot of guys involved.
Pitino on Nate Mason: Yeah, I try to remind him he wasn’t that successful, but he’ll be a guy that people talk about and we’ve really gotta make sure there’s no sophomore slump there and I’ve talked about it a million times with him. That message is being driven home hard to him, but he’s easily one of the hardest workers in the program, you see him in the gym at night, you see him in the gym in the morning so there’s no signs of the slump, but that’s something we’re watching for because he wasn’t talked about much last year and now he’ll be a guy that’s talked about so he need to understand that a lot of that comes with the territory of being a good player.
Pitino on expectations going into his third year: We have daily expectations, that’s something we try to stick by. That’s the way we try to do it. We try to get better everyday, not really worry about anything else. It’s hard to do, not saying it’s easy, but we try to block out all those noises. I do know this, after my first year you had a lot of people coming up to you saying how excited they are, they don’t come up to me anymore. We understand where we’re at and I’ve got individual expectations for each guy and as a team and if we meet those I think we’ll be a pretty good team.
Pitino on if Carlos Morris looks more consistent: He has grown a lot, he’s taking better shots, he dribbling less, he’s being more patient, his defense is getting better. Most junior college guys have an up-and-down first year and a good second year. I think DeAndre was rare, really good first year, not a great second year. You look at those guys like freshman. Carlos has been really good. I think for us to get where we need to get to the returners need to be really good and Carlos is extremely important.
Pitino on Bakary Konaté’s confidence on the court: He was really good last practice, rebounding everything and a lot of that had to do with bad block outs, but he was really offensive rebounding. He’s so big and he is raw, but he’s improving a lot. Bakary’s gotten bigger, he’s gotten more skilled, and he’s more comfortable with people around him on the court.
Pitino on who needs to become a leader this year: I would like to rely on our returners to be those guys. In order for us to do what we wanna do those six guys need to be the key to it. So I think they need to grow from last year, I think everybody does, you gotta. It’s hard to rely on freshman to give you great leadership so I’d like all six of those guys to give us something like that.