Pitino and the state of the program

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
 

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

Good to hear. I would think that the 2020s would love the idea of playing with Gabe and Oturu for a couple of years (maybe only one with Oturu). Also, Omersa seems like a guy who is a great character guy who will be fun to play with. Also, it sounds like Tre has a relationship with Suggs that could help.
 

Good to hear. I would think that the 2020s would love the idea of playing with Gabe and Oturu for a couple of years (maybe only one with Oturu). Also, Omersa seems like a guy who is a great character guy who will be fun to play with. Also, it sounds like Tre has a relationship with Suggs that could help.

I always laugh at gophers being projected as leave early guys
 

I always laugh at gophers being projected as leave early guys

Well, mostly I understand that but I think Oturu really does have the potential to leave early. Relatively speaking, he's having a fine freshman year. Doing a search in the sports reference database for freshmen players classified as Centers, Forward/Centers, or Center/Forwards with 20 + games, 20 + minutes per game, and a player efficiency rating of 20 + gives only 5 players. One is the center at Western Kentucky who is projected to be a first round draft pick and supposedly gave Happ great difficulty in that Wisconsin loss, another is Moses Brown of UCLA who was a five star recruit, two are guys from mid-major schools (Belmont and Utah State) who I never heard of (but, those schools are doing very well this year and I guess those guys are a significant part of the reason), and the fifth is Oturu.

It's not at all uncommon for players to make a big jump from the freshman to soph year and Daniel is already doing much better than most of his freshman peers. If he keeps progressing, I don't see why he couldn't go early. There have been a fair number of early entry big men drafted this century who didn't have as good of numbers as Daniel has now.
 

Oturu is a great candidate to leave early. The NBA drafts on potential and not only is he overflowing with that but he is improving every single day.
 


It's not at all uncommon for players to make a big jump from the freshman to soph year and Daniel is already doing much better than most of his freshman peers. If he keeps progressing, I don't see why he couldn't go early. There have been a fair number of early entry big men drafted this century who didn't have as good of numbers as Daniel has now.

Especially big men. Pryzbilla had a lesser freshman season than Oturu, made a big leap his sophomore year, and (infamously) left for the pros midway through it.
 

Especially big men. Pryzbilla had a lesser freshman season than Oturu, made a big leap his sophomore year, and (infamously) left for the pros midway through it.

Pryzbilla had a few more inches on Oturu right?
 

Especially big men. Pryzbilla had a lesser freshman season than Oturu, made a big leap his sophomore year, and (infamously) left for the pros midway through it.

Przybilla left because he was caught skipping classes. He was told to either go to class or he was off the team. He chose the latter.
 





Przybilla left because he was caught skipping classes. He was told to either go to class or he was off the team. He chose the latter.

That's obviously the infamous aspect of it. I don't think he appreciated being told what to do by a coach that he didn't sign up to play for, so he said bleep this blank. It's sad that he's a local kid who's now one of the more villainous figures in program history.
 

Przybilla made his own bed. Monson did exactly what he had to do - especially in the wake of an academic scandal.
 

Przybilla left because he was caught skipping classes. He was told to either go to class or he was off the team. He chose the latter.

I registered for a freshman English class that opened up last minute out of nowhere at a great time of day when everything else was full. The first day of class there were 7 kids, one was Przybilla. He never showed up again, but I have no doubt they specifically added that class just to keep him on track academically.
 



Oturu is a great candidate to leave early. The NBA drafts on potential and not only is he overflowing with that but he is improving every single day.

The one thing going against him is the NBA has little need for Power Forwards that can't shoot from the 3.
 

The one thing going against him is the NBA has little need for Power Forwards that can't shoot from the 3.

Which is why he's got a good deal of development ahead of him if he's going to be an NBA player. The earliest I could see him coming out would be after his junior year, and that's if he expands his game dramatically between now and then.
 

The one thing going against him is the NBA has little need for Power Forwards that can't shoot from the 3.

I think he will get there. In college I see him becoming like a little better version of JaJuan Johnson (former Purdue center) except for Oturu is going to be a lot thicker and stronger in a few years. What Johnson could do that was so tough to defend was pop out the the free throw line and hit jumpers. Oturu is beginning to show signs of that and it is really almost impossible to defend, especially if he can put the ball on the floor and drive if the opposing big comes out on him- which he has shown he can do. I hope we have him for at least 2 more years. The NBA also tends to pick guys before they are ready, if they have big upside.

Has anyone here seen Charles Bassey 6-10 C from Western Kentucky? I have not but he is a frosh who is averaging 14.7 pts 10 reb, has shot a few three pointers but is doing his work in the paint from his stats. He is doing that in a conference that doesn't compare with the Big Ten and he is listed as the 10th pick in NBA Draft.net projections. Not sure how he compares to Oturu.
 
Last edited:

I always laugh at gophers being projected as leave early guys

I do think Oturu does have a better chance to leave early than Coffey did but I always do always love the fear. I wish we had the problem of someone being that good or having that good of a season that it would be a decent choice to leave early.
 




Top Bottom