Hole Poll: What grade would you give the 8 year Richard Pitino era?

Hole Poll: What grade would you give the 8 year Richard Pitino era?

  • A

    Votes: 2 1.7%

  • B

    Votes: 3 2.6%

  • C

    Votes: 54 46.6%

  • D

    Votes: 52 44.8%

  • F

    Votes: 5 4.3%
  • Total voters
    116
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Hole Poll: What grade would you give the 8 year Richard Pitino era?
 


C- , only because he won a tournament game and an NIT championship....B10 record was a D.
 

Overall record: B-
B1G record: D-
Off-court class/integrity: A

I give him a C.
 

C - Average production, average results. This year could have been different if everyone was healthy. Will never know and we can't judge his 8 years on 1 year.
 


I'm not as dialed in as I was in my younger days of Gopher fandom, but I always had the feeling that he was trying to employ his dad's team's loose style of play, but you have to have better athletes to do that to win consistently. He did have some solid players during his tenure, but things never seemed to mesh that well.
 


F.

He should have never been hired. Eight years is a long time to watch that ineptitude erode the Men's Basketball program.
 

Solid F.

Complete waste of a decade.
 




I went with a C. Many times during his tenure it felt like we were right on the verge of something special but we never really seemed to get there as something would always derail us.
 

I have to put my personal feelings (which are pretty negative) aside and grade his tenure based a some sort of system. So, season by season, here it goes.

Preface

I took a sample of four seasons during Pitino's tenure (19, 18, 17, 16) and the average overall winning percentage of conference teams was slightly over 60%. For a point of reference, Tubby's overall winning percentage here was .605 so Tubby was pretty much an average Big Ten coach in terms of team success. Pitino's was .534 which was slightly better than Monson's .527. Obviously, they were both below average (but you didn't need me to tell you that).

2021 and 2020 are a bit different. The average winning percentage this season to date is .573; you would expect this season to be lower because of far fewer non-conference games played by league teams (some didn't even play their expected 7) and we did finish the Big Ten tournament where the winning percentage is always .500. 2020 was .614; you would expect that season to be a bit better because there were only two postseason games (on Weakling Wednesday) where the overall winning percentage would be lower.

So, we'll dispense with grade inflation and call anything very close to the league 60% average (except for 2021) a C

Season by Season

2014: .658 winning percentage. He certainly doesn't deserve an A for this year (four conference teams had overall winning percentages over .700 and a couple were close to .800) and his record was fattened up by weak NIT competition (remember we played High Point, St. Marys, and Southern Mississippi at home to start that tournament). Still, he deserves some recognition for this achievement.

Grade: B

2015: .545 winning percentage. We might call this a C minus but I think it's worse than that because of all the players he had returning from the NIT championship team. No postseason this year.

Grade: D+

2016: .258 winning percentage. This is a no-brainer

Grade: F. Actually, I've never heard of an F minus but this season deserves that.

2017: .706 winning percentage. Clearly his best season. Three teams did finish better. Tempted to give an A minus but losing the first game of the tournament brings it down.

Grade: B+

2018: .469 winning percentage. Horribly disappointing season. Unusually large number of bad conference teams this year.

Grade: D

2019: .611 winning percentage. Slightly above the league average. Made the tournament and won a game.

Grade: B -

2020: .484 winning percentage. One of only 3 conference teams to finish below .500 overall. But, they were significantly better than the horrific last two

Grade: D

2021: .483 winning percentage. Virtually identical to 2020 so giving the same grade is warranted.

Grade: D

So, scoring as follows:

B+ 3.25 (1 season)
B: 3.00 (1)
B- 2.75 (1)
D+: 1.25 (1)
D: 1.0 (3)
F-: -.25 (1)

I get an average of 1.65 which I guess is closest to a C -
 
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Solid C

Because I am not a basketball fan at all and he recruited some talented players and beat some good teams in the regular season. At times he got me to care about basketball which isn't easy to do.

Just no success in March
 



Gave him a D for lack of player development, poor recruiting, never having a deep bench, lack of game time adjustments, no identity on O or D and rarely seeing passion for the game from his team. As a person I liked his interviews and he ran a clean program- as far as we know. Wish him and his family the best and it's past time to make BB competitive again.
 


I gave a D, hard to give F being he got few players to NBA, tourney win that had been a long drought, engaging.
 

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