Gopherfan84
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How much bigger of a disaster could things be? Pitino is 37-66 in Big Ten play. He has by far the worst conference winning percentage of any Gopher coach going back 50 years.
Payton Willis was an ineffective bench player for a Vanderbilt team that was every bit as bad as Minnesota in '17-18. He didn't start for a 12-20 team and shot 34.8% from the field.
We are currently either 13 or 14th in recruiting for the 2019 cycle depending on your site of choice. Pitino will probably completely whiff on the 2019 class in Minnesota unless Hurt pulls a surprise. He's said on his radio show that the poor year last year has made it difficult on the recruiting trail. Going in to this season, Pitino was the Vegas favorite to be the first coach fired in college basketball. I believe that his status on the hot seat is a big reason for the recruiting struggle.
Lets say the Gophers win 4 more games to finish .500 in the conference. They make the NCAA tournament as somewhere between a 10 and 12 seed...and get bounced in the first round. Where are we then? I feel like we are right back where we are this year with Pitino in limbo depending on his performance in 2019-2020. I don't think he recruits the 2020 class successfully under this scenario...and it's one of the rosier scenarios you can paint at this point.
A new coach would almost certainly have a better shot at the top 2020 kids unless Pitino can turn this season around to the point that he's safe for a couple years. The minimum for that to occur is finishing with a winning conference record and finally winning his first NCAA game.
Pitino is in ok standing with the 2020s that might come here, but still needs to win like you said. A new staff having to build new relationships would make it really hard. Not a reason to not move on, but it's true with the 2020 class as recruiting goes