Should we have a better plan to absorb injuries? Certainly
Should we have a better plan to prevent certain injuries? Yes, we should.
Therefore the injuries are not excuses. They are reality. Personnel losses have occurred every year for Pitino.
By demonstrating your program has not figured this out in 8 (eight) years is why you should be fired! Not because you are making "injury excuses". You don't have a plan to compensate...he can point to circumstances for the majority of all the poor finishes. He still has done no planning to insure
the results are different this year or any previous years.
Plans for preventing injuries? What does that entail? Are we blaming coaching for players getting injured now?
Injuries/personnel losses have not really been a problem this year, as of right now. Omersa was the 7th or 8th man, and would be maybe even farther down the bench than that now, with the additional minutes that Jamal Mashburn and Tre Williams have been getting lately. Mutaf was a freshman who didn't play much. Being without them likely hasn't had a major negative impact on the results so far this season. Being without Gabe may have made a difference in the Indiana game. He's one of our best defenders, and I think Indiana shot over 60% from the field in the second half. I'm not gonna say we certainly would have won with him, but that's probably the one game so far this season that you can somewhat reasonably argue that having an injured player out cost us a win.
If Carr and Robbins (and maybe Gabe too) are fine and play these last few games and we lose them and miss the tournament, I don't think you're going to see very many people clamoring to have Pitino back for another year, and calling this season a wash because we might have lost one game due to an injury. It feels like a lot of the posts in this thread are viciously attacking a strawman argument that possibly being without Robbins, Carr, and/or Gabe for a couple games in the future is going to be cited as an argument for why we lost six games in the past, and thus Pitino should get another do-over next year.
It's possible to be displeased with the performance of the team the past few weeks when they were full strength or close to it, as well as how they were routinely getting blown out on the road before that, and also acknowledge that possibly missing arguably the 3 best players on the team for the next few games could be a tough obstacle to overcome. What does our lineup look like without them?
1 - Mashburn
2 - Williams
3 - Gach
4 - Johnson
5 - Curry
That gives you Ihnen, Freeman, and Mitchell off the bench for the post spots, and probably Hunt Conroy as your only reserve guard. At that point you're literally down 5 scholarship players from the start of the season, and you're just kind of low on dudes to throw out on the court. Hopefully that's enough to beat Nebraska and Northwestern, probably not enough to beat Rutgers. Having to play 3 games like that doesn't affect my impression of the season too much. Had we played half the season with such a tattered roster, and ended up with the same record we have now, I would have more sympathy. It probably wouldn't lessen the outrage about Pitino too much though, especially for those who were ready to fire him when we actually did play half the season with 3 starters missing.
It has happened every year...He plays no bench. Mutaf and Freeman could have been next man up IF they had been getting consistent minutes from the beginning... including beginning last year for Freeman. Gee, we got no backups....gimmee a break....you don't develop them. Just a few minutes a night every night would have made a world of a difference
in talking about next man up. Can't expect somebody to step up who has been told by his minutes you don't think he's good enough to even see the floor.
I'd guess that getting the three newcomers in our starting lineup better acclimated to playing together during the 20 days and 5 games between the season opener and the conference opener against Illinois was deemed more important than finding 5 minutes per game each for Freeman, Mutaf, and Mitchell to get broken in. And actually they did all get at least 4 minutes each in our two 30 point wins against Green Bay and Kansas City, with the exception of Mutaf not playing against Green Bay, as I think he was injured for that game.
But I remember underwhelming reviews of Robbins early on, just like with Carr in his first few games, and he obviously got better as games went on. I think it makes sense to dedicate minutes to developing bigger contributors like Johnson and Robbins than making certain you find time for Freeman and Mitchell.
