3 factors spelled doom for Pitino's tenure here (#3. Fleck might have been the worst thing to happen to Pitino's career.)

[BleedGopher]

per Souhan:

3. Fleck might have been the worst thing to happen to Pitino's career.

In Fleck, Coyle was able to hire the perceived best young football coach available, and Fleck produced a historic season that fulfilled at least some of his more realistic promises. Fleck, at least for one impressive season, pushed aside all of the excuses Gophers football coaches have been reasonably offering for decades.

Why we should remember Richard Pitino as an overachiever in Minnesota

Pitino won only 36% of his Big Ten games, which sounds terrible unless you consider modern Gophers basketball history.

www.startribune.com

Go Gophers!!

 

[Bad Gopher]

Plus he got to that level of the mountain relatively quickly while Pitino was still spinning his wheels in the mud. As some folks on here have said, you should know within the first 3-4 years what you've got.

 

[MRJ]

Wow. We've now come to the point of other coach's successes being reasons why Pitino failed.

Holy smokes, talk about reaching for any and all reasons to explain why he was let go. But hey, at least Richard can now sit back and think: "Damn it, if P.J. hadn't had that really good team, I'd still be employed."

Watching these all "explanations" is getting quite amusing at this point...

 

[TurfGopher]

The local fishwraps just need to fill their pages. The Williams arena excuse is kind of a stretch as well.

 

[Holy Man]

Nutty.

 

[benlaur]

per Souhan:

3. Fleck might have been the worst thing to happen to Pitino's career.

In Fleck, Coyle was able to hire the perceived best young football coach available, and Fleck produced a historic season that fulfilled at least some of his more realistic promises. Fleck, at least for one impressive season, pushed aside all of the excuses Gophers football coaches have been reasonably offering for decades.

Why we should remember Richard Pitino as an overachiever in Minnesota

Pitino won only 36% of his Big Ten games, which sounds terrible unless you consider modern Gophers basketball history.

www.startribune.com

Go Gophers!!

"Might" and "could", the worst words in modern "journalism". Anything could be true.

Perhaps the author should look at the rest of the Big Ten and tenure for coaches with losing records in the conference.

 

[cjbfbp]

Plus he got to that level of the mountain relatively quickly while Pitino was still spinning his wheels in the mud. As some folks on here have said, you should know within the first 3-4 years what you've got.

Mostly, although Scott Drew had four straight losing seasons before starting his successful run at Baylor.

What I don't think gets enough attention about Pitino's record at Minnesota is that his average conference standing was actually a bit worse in his last four years than it was in his first four years.

First Four Average Conference Ranking: 8.75
Last Four Average Conference Ranking: 9.67

Not only did the relative team performance within the conference not improve over time, it actually declined by about one rank over the latter half of his tenure.

 

[Otis]

What were the first 2 factors?

1. Bad Luck?

2. Poor in-game coaching ability, lack of player development, crap recruiting, lack of connection to Minnesota HS coaches, Faith in players with bad character

I'm surprised anyone can limit his failure to just 3 reasons.