Sid: Hollins Play has Provided U a Spark

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I didn't see this posted, forgive me if Bleed already had it up. Couple interesting nuggets I haven't "seen" before, but we've all discussed.

Hollins' numbers over the past 3 games have been unreal. Coach has always praised him for his leadership and the intangibles, but it's nice to see the objective measures validating what we've been hearing is his worth all season long. I really hope he continues to "watch the clock" and have a very nice farewell tour around the big 10. It's rare that a kid in the B1G plays as many minutes as Hollins will seeing as he was a contributor as a freshemn. Big10 freshmen contributors don't usually stay 4 years.

Sid quotes Pitino in saying that Nwankwo is going to be a project. I know we've a lot about next years front court and what it will look like. I've got to imagine this would lead one to believe Pitino doesn't expect Big Jon to be an integral part of the team next year. Going to be a huge risk going into next year with Bakary being our only big with minutes, hopefully we are targeting every single Senior transfer and JUCO big available. I see the ability and potential in Bakary, and hope his age and perceived intelligence help him progress at a greater rate than others. But he fouls A LOT and even a significant improvement there would leave us extremely thin in the front court.

Pitino says a lot of the things I laid out in other threads speaking about how long it takes to turn a program around and how this is really his first full recruiting cycle. I truly believe we need to give him time to build his brand before passing judgement on whether or not it will work in the B1G. I see it being just fine.

Pitino said:

Our goal coming in when we got here was this class coming in. This was the first true class where we had some time to recruit to it. When we got here, people have to realize we really, really were going to struggle if we didn’t bring in a DeAndre Mathieu, a Joey King, even a Malik Smith for that regard, I’m not sure how good we would have been last year. Those guys really helped us bridge the gap. Now it’s all about recruiting, certainly.

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Winasota Gopher said:

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Pitino says a lot of the things I laid out in other threads speaking about how long it takes to turn a program around and how this is really his first full recruiting cycle. I truly believe we need to give him time to build his brand before passing judgement on whether or not it will work in the B1G. I see it being just fine.

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If he really said that, then I have some questions about his integrity. It is not like he took over a team that was under .500 and completely devoid of talent. We trounced UCLA and lost to Florida in the NCAA tourney. We lost Trevor and Rodney to graduation after that year, as well as Welch and Ingram. However, Pitino even said in his introductory press conference that the cupboard was not bare, that we had talent and he was stepping into a good situation. Funny how the storyline changes when you lose a few games.

goldy93 said:

If he really said that, then I have some questions about his integrity. It is not like he took over a team that was under .500 and completely devoid of talent. We trounced UCLA and lost to Florida in the NCAA tourney. We lost Trevor and Rodney to graduation after that year, as well as Welch and Ingram. However, Pitino even said in his introductory press conference that the cupboard was not bare, that we had talent and he was stepping into a good situation. Funny how the storyline changes when you lose a few games.

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Except for Hollins' we were devoid of talent. We had EE(not a fit for Pitino) and a 300lb Mo Walker, and a RS Freshmen Buggs as our only post players. At PG we had Andre Hollins(hasn't played PG for Pitino much if any), and Mav.

Funny how you read what you want to read.

Also that UCLA team was one who just lost their starting point guard(Jordan adams) to a broken foot exactly 1 week prior and had Shabazz going through the what age is he really scandal(newspaper in the morning of our game had the article).

goldy93 said:

If he really said that, then I have some questions about his integrity. It is not like he took over a team that was under .500 and completely devoid of talent. We trounced UCLA and lost to Florida in the NCAA tourney. We lost Trevor and Rodney to graduation after that year, as well as Welch and Ingram. However, Pitino even said in his introductory press conference that the cupboard was not bare, that we had talent and he was stepping into a good situation. Funny how the storyline changes when you lose a few games.

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Oh, that's all.

As far as saying the cupboard wasn't bare, I remember Brad Childress saying that, but I'll have to take your word that Richie said it, too. With the Hollins' it wasn't completely bare, but everybody knew there would be a severe dropoff because of the graduations.

FYI what Goldy quoted ME saying was not me saying Pitino said the same thing. I said he says a lot of things I laid out in other threads, which he does. These threads were about the topic of turning a program around and how much time it takes.

Goldy's quote is not referencing, at least it doesn't appear to be, what Pitino said in the article. I doubt Goldy read the article as he quoted me, not Pitino, and questioned his integrity off of whether or not Pitino said it, and then proceeded to elaborate as if he did say it..... So you can judge Goldy's integrity based off of that if you wish to make the same mistakes he made and ASSUME someone said something they may or may not have.

I didn't read the article either Winasota. Thank you.

Back to Andre. Right now he's playing like the all-conference caliber player we were optimistically expecting to see this year. By no coincidence, the team is looking like a pretty decent team right now. Presumably they'll improve on ball security and rebounding, at least incrementally. If they do, this team could be potent before it's over. Too bad they fumbled those early games away.