Rick Pitino on what he told Richard about difficult year at Minnesota

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Gopher Warrior said:
Awful commentary from Rick Pitino.

He does make really bad decisions from time to time (like most of us).

History shows that.
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It's arguable but not anywhere near to awful. One could argue that we didn't have enough talent or that we did. What elder Pitino said is true- we don't have all Big Ten players and those will need to be recruited and developed. It is possible that this team could have been good enough to make the tournament but things had to go right for them. They lost the close ones early and with it they lost their confidence and the season was near dead 5 games into the Big Ten season. It would have taken a "coach of the year" performance to bring them back from 0-5 to making the NCAAs.

People are going to ask Pitino about his son and he's going to answer in a lot of cases. I am happy that they do - it puts the Gopher program on the radar screen.
 

Winnipegopher said:
I dunno. Would it really be hard considering it is a press conference for Louisville-Northern Iowa at the NCAA tournament? Even if asked a question about Minnesota, he could say "I think Richard is doing a good job but I am here to talk about Louisville".
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The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. We know Richard is an engaging person who gives meaningful and robust answers to questions he's asked, and that comes down from the elder Pitino. You can protest against his nature and resolve to not do things his way when you're a famous and successful coach, but this is the way he is - he answers questions.
 

I have no real problem with what he said, but to me it is a bit of a political convenience for Richard more than anything. Sort of providing an "excuse" for the season (oh the players weren't good enough) that gets play in MN, without Richard having to make the excuse nor having to throw his players under the bus.
 

We had enough talent to make the tourney but not enough talent to give us much margin for error. I don't look at our team and think we massively underachieved but I don't feel like they played up to their potential either.
 

Dre was a preseason consensus All-B1G guy two years ago; Mathieu was this year. What happened, Rick?
 


No matter how Rick wants to finesse it to the media, his son's team underachieved.

6 conference wins.

4-5 at Williams, with a home slate that did not include NCAA qualifiers Indiana, Maryland, and Michigan State.

1-4 vs. Nebraska, Northwestern, and Penn State, with home losses to Northwestern & Penn State.

The only significant accomplishment (team-wise) was true road wins over NCAA qualifiers Iowa and Michigan State.
 

jamiche said:
True. However, unfair as this may be to our young coach, there are more than half a dozen coaches in the B1G who could have coached this roster into the Dance. (Izzo, Matta, Bo, Collins, Boehlein, Turgeon, Miles, Painter, maybe Crean) Richard will be a very good coach and may even win a national championship or two, but he's still raw.
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Could have is the key piont you make (not would have). If the players don't make clutch shots at the end of the game, it doesn't matter who coaches. Izzo and Michigan St. probably wouldn't be in the Sweet 16 if the free throw shooting of the team hadn't improved by 20 percentages in the dance vs. the regular season. Izzo is a great coach, but should we give him credit for the team's improvement in free throw shooting at the right time? Hard to make that argument just as it is, in my opinion, to put the poor Gopher season on just RP's shoulders as some have suggested.
 

watertown 1987 guy n said:
Could have is the key piont you make (not would have). If the players don't make clutch shots at the end of the game, it doesn't matter who coaches. Izzo and Michigan St. probably wouldn't be in the Sweet 16 if the free throw shooting of the team hadn't improved by 20 percentages in the dance vs. the regular season. Izzo is a great coach, but should we give him credit for the team's improvement in free throw shooting at the right time? Hard to make that argument just as it is, in my opinion, to put the poor Gopher season on just RP's shoulders as some have suggested.
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That's the funny part about coaching: do you praise Izzo for the FT percentage miraculously improving in the tournament, or question why they seemingly underachieved the whole rest of the season? Do you give Pitino credit for Mathieu coming out of nowhere and playing great last year or criticize him for Mathieu coming back down to earth this year?
 

oleboy41 said:
We had enough talent to make the tourney but not enough talent to give us much margin for error. I don't look at our team and think we massively underachieved but I don't feel like they played up to their potential either.
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+1
 



SelectionSunday said:
No matter how Rick wants to finesse it to the media, his son's team underachieved.

6 conference wins.

4-5 at Williams, with a home slate that did not include NCAA qualifiers Indiana, Maryland, and Michigan State.

1-4 vs. Nebraska, Northwestern, and Penn State, with home losses to Northwestern & Penn State.

The only significant accomplishment (team-wise) was true road wins over NCAA qualifiers Iowa and Michigan State.
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Post-season media voting is more indicative of performance than talent.

Overall, I don't disagree that they underachieved. But if you look at the rosters of the 9 teams that finished ahead of them this year and assuming you could hypothetically have switched our entire roster with any of the nine......how many of those teams would you NOT have traded rosters with at the start of the conference season (for this year only)? The answer is probably not many. Talent does matter, obviously. That being said, they did underachieve.
 


oleboy41 said:
We had enough talent to make the tourney but not enough talent to give us much margin for error. I don't look at our team and think we massively underachieved but I don't feel like they played up to their potential either.
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I think the most accurate take. Preseason predictions had us all over the place from top 4 to bottom 4. I know people here were doing the usual sputtering and, "We'll show them." Majority predictions were 8, 9, and 10 which were pretty accurate.

That said, Dad is giving a little cover to his son. I think that's just going to be part of the deal and there are negatives and positives with that.
 

Bad Gopher said:
That's the funny part about coaching: do you praise Izzo for the FT percentage miraculously improving in the tournament, or question why they seemingly underachieved the whole rest of the season? Do you give Pitino credit for Mathieu coming out of nowhere and playing great last year or criticize him for Mathieu coming back down to earth this year?
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Exactly! The key is to have enough good players on the roster such that you can overcome the ups and downs of the individual guys who each may encounter their own issues in life or on the basketball court. It's on Pitino to recruit that team. Something didn't work with this team and the coach bears some of that blame, no one can argue that. As the years go on and he does it with his own players he will become more and more accountable for what happens. This year, maybe he didn't do the right things. But when certain guys didn't perform there were very few options below them.
 



Tim1406 said:
Preseason All-BIG, just like your blog or my opinions, means absolutely nothing.
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It indicates the consensus was Pitino had all B1G talent in his roster. Results fell below expectations.

It speaks to the nonsense of Rick's commentary.
 

Gopher Warrior said:
It indicates the consensus was Pitino had all B1G talent in his roster. Results fell below expectations.

It speaks to the nonsense of Rick's commentary.
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Matheiu and Hollins were both 3rd team by a few votes. Which makes them far from "the consensus". Do you know what that word means? Rick's commentary was accurate and also there to limit the hit Richard's reputation gets. That preseason poll was by the media not the coaches too, so take it with a grain of salt.
 

We don't have the talent to be competitive in the tourney this year, it's easy for a Hall of Fame coach to see.
Hopefully within the year or 2 we get those players (Scorers, defenders, rebounders)
Rick was honest about his own teams talent level after barely winning the 1st round game against UC-Urvine by stating 'We are not a great team by any means'.

it's also a case of a Father protecting his boys rep.
I like it, I think it's cool that we are Rick Pitino's 2nd team he roots for behind his own Louisville team.
 

I do not see any negatives at all to Pitinos comments. CONTRARY, he is telling him to get better players. A unbiased evaluation of the roster would yield a conference finish of no better than 7th. Recruiting is tough. MINNESOTA is a very hard sell. GET those 2nd tier guys, lets say 90-150, get them to play defense and when they are upperclassmen you can compete. The state is dry in its cycle but you can find those under the radar guys like a Jordan taylor that are hungry for playing time. That is exactly how you all got Mason. UVA wanted him but he was not going to see the court over Perrantes, Brogdon, Shayok, Hall or Stith. He will be a very good player for you especially when he gets 50 games under his belt. in three years there is no reason to not be in that 4th place slot. IF you can not get to 4th place by year 5 you have the wrong guy.
 


I agree with Rick Pitino's comments

Stated my take too many times but if you could agree that Pitino massively over achieved last season...then you'd see this season in a different light. As stated by many we had no margin for error. For our situation, McNeil's loss was critical....it left no candidate to replace Austin Hollins perimeter defense. The year before we had two perimter defenders. Plus, all the other attributes McNeil potentially offered such as scoring was gone with nobody to replace him....even just minutes not to mention competition.

Mathieu wasn't asked to stay at his first college stop. He wasn't recruited in April of the next year. Come on, his season last year was a miracle. You can't make someone attack the basket who decides not to (for whatever reason?) especially when you have no bench to replace them.

Blaming a coach for Hollins being inconsistent is off base. Not everybody Izzo coaches or anybody else does is dynamic their entire run. Some people leave for all coaches. Take Isiah Dahlman....Minnesota's best high school player in an earlier time for quite a while. Didn't get off the bench for Izzo...is that recruiting, coaching, developing talent or what? It failed. Nobody bats a 1000.

Mo was dead weight. He got more out of him than just about anybody expected.

So, the idea we underachieved this year, to me isn't accurate. Could we have gone 10 and 8? Sure, but it would have been an awesome coaching job again to do so. We did not have the players.

Criticize Pitino how he built the roster. But he can coach just fine. Like dad said, we need better players.
 

builtbadgers said:
A unbiased evaluation of the roster would yield a conference finish of no better than 7th.
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OK, but they finished 10th with a 6-12 record so I think that is worth being a little upset about.
 

Jigga said:
We don't have the talent to be competitive in the tourney this year, it's easy for a Hall of Fame coach to see.
Hopefully within the year or 2 we get those players (Scorers, defenders, rebounders)
Rick was honest about his own teams talent level after barely winning the 1st round game against UC-Urvine by stating 'We are not a great team by any means'.

it's also a case of a Father protecting his boys rep.
I like it, I think it's cool that we are Rick Pitino's 2nd team he roots for behind his own Louisville team.
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Not too difficult for a guy who works for an Insurance Company either.
 


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