I don’t predict to start with and not having seen any of the portal players play previously I was somewhat amused by the lofty predictions many in the media and on this board had for this team. Nothing tangible, click bait, which is a con, and unwarranted enthusiasm from a starved fan base, which is very, very understandable.
Pitino had a very difficult task coming in here, the desire to win immediately and the need to blow up a decades long losing culture that IMO hit rock bottom last year. So he recruited who he recruited in the very short time span he had and went to work, warning it would be a rocky road to start and it has been.
Fans looked at the offensive stats of those players and decided we were “made in the shade.” But offense does not win, offense gets the headlines and the girls but from back in the peach basket days, defense and rebounding are the most important factors because they are constants, offense and especially shooting, are variables. So the team, unfortunately, has not bought into that, with the exception of a few. Or maybe, with the players past experience, they cannot; I don’t buy that, but it is possible.
So we get posts blaming the freshman, ‘they stink”; blaming Pitino, “he should go zone” “why play the freshman”; blaming Ludlum and Jenkins, frankly not sure why; blaming Dingle, when it was obvious from the start, at least to me, that he was a player who could not contribute without the ball in his hand - constantly!! You can see on offense, his instinct is to “run behind the ball” to go get it.
Personally, I don’t want Pitino to do anything but what he thinks he should do, I want him to build a freaking program in the time he is here that another coach can come in and sustain. Yes, I want SJU to win this year, but more than that, I want SJU to return to the days where they were a viable competitive program.
Last point, I need to stop posting during games, because, well……. just because.
