@Marquette, Sat., Feb. 10, 6p, FS-1

I don’t buy this “bad culture “ mantra that coach keeps bringing up. He kept two great kids in Soriano and Traore and everyone else was new with a positive attitude, what bad culture? Does it automatically come from the air?? A culture is created by a coach and his players and a fan base and from what I’ve seen, fans have been showing up. I love Pitino but this “bad culture” talks sounds like an excuse.
 
I don’t buy this “bad culture “ mantra that coach keeps bringing up. He kept two great kids in Soriano and Traore and everyone else was new with a positive attitude, what bad culture? Does it automatically come from the air?? A culture is created by a coach and his players and a fan base and from what I’ve seen, fans have been showing up. I love Pitino but this “bad culture” talks sounds like an excuse.
He was talking about the culture of transferring and free agency. In the context of stability. Most likely culture will be built on being the highest payer of players now.
 
Bottom line we knew there was a real problem when we lost like 5/6 in a stretch of conf games. Pretending it’s ok we lose every big game is a loser mentality. We have Pitino. I think Dingle was a complete bust, Ledlum is just ok (misses tons of bunnies, on slow side, questionable hands), Joel is in his own head & disappears in biggest games, etc. Luis is very athletic but often out of control & raw plus his injury issues. We just cannot defend at a high enough level. Way too slow laterally. We are used to having some top guards but this yr we only have 1 BE level guard in DJ. Our guards cannot get in paint regularly. This is who we are & it will take small miracle to make NCAAT. We have fundamental issues as a team. Portal return went about as bad as it could have & we whiffed. I trust Pitino will know exactly who to get this portal season. If he can’t do it, then…well…🤷🏻‍♂️
 
Bottom line we knew there was a real problem when we lost like 5/6 in a stretch of conf games. Pretending it’s ok we lose every big game is a loser mentality. We have Pitino. I think Dingle was a complete bust, Ledlum is just ok (misses tons of bunnies, on slow side, questionable hands), Joel is in his own head & disappears in biggest games, etc. Luis is very athletic but often out of control & raw plus his injury issues. We just cannot defend at a high enough level. Way too slow laterally. We are used to having some top guards but this yr we only have 1 BE level guard in DJ. Our guards cannot get in paint regularly. This is who we are & it will take small miracle to make NCAAT. We have fundamental issues as a team. Portal return went about as bad as it could have & we whiffed. I trust Pitino will know exactly who to get this portal season. If he can’t do it, then…well…🤷🏻‍♂️
Ledlum has bad hands? Where do you see that? Totally disagree.
 
I think his point is if you took Mullins team with Pitino as coach that is a definite NCAA team and probably a win as well.
I don’t care who was the coach of Mullin’s first team, nobody was taking them to the tournament. Mullin’s final team clearly underachieved. The teams before that did not have enough talent for which Mullin was partly to blame. Perhaps if LoVett didn’t quit his final year that team would have been more competitive.
 
I've defended Rick from the get go about his decision to revamp the entire roster, but let's not re-write history now in attempt to defend him. Rick decided that he needed to jettison almost the entire team from last season, which resulted in him having to throw together a team with only one meaningful player. It's not as though he was left with a bare cuppord, like Norm and Chris were.

I get why he did why he did what he did, but with the wisdom of hindsight, that decision doesn't look so great at the moment.

You cannot forget- several of those players had eligibility issues for next season at our school and/or were asked by admins to cut them loose. Irregardless, other than Joel - 2 players (AJ and the Memphis guy ) would have been fine but those 2 left unfortunately. The other players were not all that good and would have done worse than this team.
 
Beast, when you're a CEO and company stock takes heat you get criticized, same thing if you're President & economy is bad; no reason a sports coach, legendary or not, should be immune. It goes with the territory. Ninety percent of posters are happy Rick is coach, doesn't mean he is or should be immune from criticism.
You're definitely right. I should have explained more completely. Certainly it's fair to discuss player rotations, in game decisions, personnel decisions -, etc. It's what fans do. I was responding more to the over the top assessments on here and off this site that are starting to say Pitino is washed up, a dinosaur, and unable to adapt to today's game. The first set of critiques are valid, the others, not IMO.
 
You're definitely right. I should have explained more completely. Certainly it's fair to discuss player rotations, in game decisions, personnel decisions -, etc. It's what fans do. I was responding more to the over the top assessments on here and off this site that are starting to say Pitino is washed up, a dinosaur, and unable to adapt to today's game. The first set of critiques are valid, the others, not IMO.
I think if Rick didn't have his musings after the UCONN game, the board would have a different feel to it
 
You're definitely right. I should have explained more completely. Certainly it's fair to discuss player rotations, in game decisions, personnel decisions -, etc. It's what fans do. I was responding more to the over the top assessments on here and off this site that are starting to say Pitino is washed up, a dinosaur, and unable to adapt to today's game. The first set of critiques are valid, the others, not IMO.
Completely agree, way premature for those kind of conclusions.
 
What does that have to do with anything. There are many teams like The Hall, Butler, Xavier etc. who are not better than the Johnnies who have beaten top 10 teams. This is the Nig East, decent teams win at home.

Even Mullin who aside from Norm Roberts many perceive as the worst coach in Johnny history beat some top 10 teams during his tenure.
My point being (I a m t y p i n g s l o w l y) we lost to a top 10 team. We wore down in the end and never had an answer to last season's Player of the Year. Also, if we had a positive contribution from Soriano, the outcome might have been different.
 
I don’t buy this “bad culture “ mantra that coach keeps bringing up. He kept two great kids in Soriano and Traore and everyone else was new with a positive attitude, what bad culture? Does it automatically come from the air?? A culture is created by a coach and his players and a fan base and from what I’ve seen, fans have been showing up. I love Pitino but this “bad culture” talks sounds like an excuse.
As I remember, Coach made that case before the season started.
 
Our guards play matador D. Quick guards go right around us.

Very good observation Mic's On.
Yup! So many blow bys I’ve lost count…I watch other games & defenders are cutting off each lane. With us it just seems like opponents get tonssssss of easy layups. One thing I’ve noticed is we miss tons & tons of bunnies. I remember watching Posh while he was here & thinking to myself “easy 2” anytime he got in paint. Assuming he wasn’t blocked, you knew he was finishing. And the shots were rarely in & out or off rim or going around rim 3x. He was always clean in paint. This yr we are very poor finishing. We get the positioning we want & still miss. Also many less and-1’s vs past because of lack of finishing & that’s if we can even get in the paint to begin with! We seem to have to work so hard for easy pts.
 
Willful blindness and revisionist history. We all saw that the players who left were totally disrespectful to Anderson and his staff. It was embarrassing to see on national tv. Throw in Posh blowing off a meeting with Pitino. To go to Atlantic City no less! Add in Wasu beating up a team manager on school premises. And you still think Pitino keeps these guys hoping they all turn a new leaf? Reward that type of behavior? If Posh did not have enough respect for Pitino to attend a meeting, you think he would he would magically become Daniss like in terms of buying into the Pitino regimen? I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes at Butler. But maybe , just maybe the crowd in Posh’s ear stayed in Queens and Posh is better off without their influence on his daily life.
I don’t buy this “bad culture “ mantra that coach keeps bringing up. He kept two great kids in Soriano and Traore and everyone else was new with a positive attitude, what bad culture? Does it automatically come from the air?? A culture is created by a coach and his players and a fan base and from what I’ve seen, fans have been showing up. I love Pitino but this “bad culture” talks sounds like an excuse.
 
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