Rick Pitino - Head Coach at St John’s University!!!

It is not mutually exclusive to highly appreciate Pitino’s tremendous accomplishments here, but also dislike some of his occasional pointed, public barbs at players. Of course, you take the very good with those shortcomings. I find criticisms of him well within acceptable boundaries. Well, enough of this, better to look forward to a promising season.
 
Pitino certainly has shortcomings . And , has throughout his Career.

He’s a great evaluator of Talent , works his team to a frazzle and has them improve their defense .

In my mind , he’s made mistakes in game situations , like all Coaches .
And, as said previously and numerously , he isn’t above trashing players in the media .

One thing not mentioned is , his penchant for dropping Players from his roster easily .

This year he lost RJ, Wilcher , Glover , Vince, Makar , Dunlap .



Maybe Jackson , Sanon , Mitchell , Hopkins ,
Darling will replicate this year’s record . We will
see .

It’s possible the guys who left might have had enough of Rick , as he did them
.
 
Pitino certainly has shortcomings . And , has throughout his Career.

He’s a great evaluator of Talent , works his team to a frazzle and has them improve their defense .

In my mind , he’s made mistakes in game situations , like all Coaches .
And, as said previously and numerously , he isn’t above trashing players in the media .

One thing not mentioned is , his penchant for dropping Players from his roster easily .

This year he lost RJ, Wilcher , Glover , Vince, Makar , Dunlap .



Maybe Jackson , Sanon , Mitchell , Hopkins ,
Darling will replicate this year’s record . We will
see .

It’s possible the guys who left might have had enough of Rick , as he did them
.


Besides RJ, I believe the rest were over recruited
 
Pitino certainly has shortcomings . And , has throughout his Career.

He’s a great evaluator of Talent , works his team to a frazzle and has them improve their defense .

In my mind , he’s made mistakes in game situations , like all Coaches .
And, as said previously and numerously , he isn’t above trashing players in the media .

One thing not mentioned is , his penchant for dropping Players from his roster easily .

This year he lost RJ, Wilcher , Glover , Vince, Makar , Dunlap .



Maybe Jackson , Sanon , Mitchell , Hopkins ,
Darling will replicate this year’s record . We will
see .

It’s possible the guys who left might have had enough of Rick , as he did them
.
In one case, I know from a multi-person face to face conversation (only the one player) that last statement was a factor, but certainly not the only one. The feeling he was recruited over, which was completely understood and accepted as part of the game, seemed to be the deciding one.
The player shared there were no hard feelings and was effusive and openly grateful for what he learned about the game. Stated he just thought the best thing for him and all involved was to move on.
I found interesting that he shared that his belief was that across college basketball a factor in many players portalling rather than return was the belief among many players that those signed out of the portal would always have an advantage in getting playing time over most returnees or recruits. Thought that was an obvious factor in Eijofor signing up so quickly as SJU wanted no chance on losing him. The great respect he had for Eijofor was just so obvious.
Also said that he thought for some reason, the team seemed to lose a bit of the “all for one, one for all” togetherness after the BE tournament win, did not know why, offered that team chemistry is a very fragile thing and the only factor he could point to as even a maybe was that however it happened players learned of the portal players SJU had already signed which he felt was a “distraction”.
I personally asked him about the Luis benching and he shared only “Pitino’s job was to decide who played”. From the tone of the reply I think it fair to say either side of the debate could have spun it to confirm their opinion.


Edit,

On reread “already signed” was a possible very poor choice of words, “in the fold”, “in the bag”, etc. would be more appropriate
 
Just read that Gary Parrish,ollege basketball writer has selected SJU as his way too early pre season number one team I have been a log time admirer of Pitino and hoped that SJU would hire him when Iona did but what he has accoplied in two years with this proram is truly remarkable.
With the NIL and transfer portal the landscape of college basketball has chaged drastically but Pitinos accomplishment is more than remarkable
 
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