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

Reminder, if we need any. Roll back less than one year and just about everything negative that could be said about Richmond was said, including that he was not very good to begin with. Wrath and negative critiques by our experts were heaped in every direction. If after a handful of 3 pt shots a guy made 20%, he was deemed a poor shooter.

If we lost by a couple of points, the team was shredded. If we won by a couple, all was well. It didn't matter that the difference could be a buzzer beater 3 point shot by an opponent, or a free throw or two made or missed on a questionable call.

One thing I love about Rick's narrative is he doesn't fawn over wins where we play badly, especially against bad teams (a Norm Roberts specialty). He also acknowledges how good some opponents are when we lose. Don't get me wrong. Rick has you rolling your eyes sometimes, but the trick is knowing that he knows when he is spinning something. Many coaches don't, and either believe their own bs or expect us to.

Things can change rapidly in basketball, game to game. There's a saying in Colorado: "If you don't like the weather, just wait till tomorrow." Things can change that fast.

Putting labels on players or coaching decisions after just 7 games is largely silly. Certainly, a guy like Ayo has at times given much more than expected, but may or may not sustain it. Certainly Prey has underwhelmed compared to last year, but that could and should change. Our high profile imports? Give them a little time. The cream always rises to the top.

Five or six poorly constructed paragraphs to say basically two things: be patient and enjoy what's in front of you.
 
Beasts of the East said:
Reminder, if we need any. Roll back less than one year and just about everything negative that could be said about Richmond was said, including that he was not very good to begin with. Wrath and negative critiques by our experts were heaped in every direction. If after a handful of 3 pt shots a guy made 20%, he was deemed a poor shooter.

If we lost by a couple of points, the team was shredded. If we won by a couple, all was well. It didn't matter that the difference could be a buzzer beater 3 point shot by an opponent, or a free throw or two made or missed on a questionable call.

One thing I love about Rick's narrative is he doesn't fawn over wins where we play badly, especially against bad teams (a Norm Roberts specialty). He also acknowledges how good some opponents are when we lose. Don't get me wrong. Rick has you rolling your eyes sometimes, but the trick is knowing that he knows when he is spinning something. Many coaches don't, and either believe their own bs or expect us to.

Things can change rapidly in basketball, game to game. There's a saying in Colorado: "If you don't like the weather, just wait till tomorrow." Things can change that fast.

Putting labels on players or coaching decisions after just 7 games is largely silly. Certainly, a guy like Ayo has at times given much more than expected, but may or may not sustain it. Certainly Prey has underwhelmed compared to last year, but that could and should change. Our high profile imports? Give them a little time. The cream always rises to the top.

Five or six poorly constructed paragraphs to say basically two things: be patient and enjoy what's in front of you.
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What does Kadary Richmond have to with Dylan Darling and the rest of this team?
 
Boo Harvey said:
What does Kadary Richmond have to with Dylan Darling and the rest of this team?
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Boo Harvey said:
What does Kadary Richmond have to with Dylan Darling and the rest of this team?
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Nothing to do with current team, everything to do with the tendency to make judgments too soon.

Itzhak Perlman runs a summer camp with his wife for gifted young musicians. I pretty much guarantee that every single kid in attendance over the past 20 years or so benefitted from being schooled by a master.

Every teacher worth a damn sees the potential in every kid and sets an expectation of where they can go with hard work and the right instruction.

I suspect Rick recruits based on what he sees as their potential, not where they are on day 1. His career accomplishments is enough for me to trust that all will improve.

Even a symphony of world class musicians has to play together for a while to reach their potential as a unit, and yes, the conductor matters.

Don't take this as a criticism. Fans can be whatever they want to be. I'm comfortable being patient and not being prematurely critical. You may not be, and that mayvsuit you better. After all, we are just in the audience, not experts.
 
Beasts of the East said:
Nothing to do with current team, everything to do with the tendency to make judgments too soon.
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I suspect that Boo's point was that whatever people foolishly thought about Kadary coming in, he had a four year track record of high level production at the high major level. So commentary about him bears no relationship to commentary about Darling, for whom it is a wholesale projection about production at this level.

And do you really think Prey is worse this year than last? That also makes no sense to me.

I'm omitting commentary on Itzhak Pearlman, girls CYO basketball, Colorado weather reports, etc in the interest of staying focused on, you know basketball
 
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lawmanfan said:
I suspect that Boo's point was that whatever people foolishly thought about Kadary coming in, he had a four year track record of high level production at the high major level. So commentary about him bears no relationship to commentary about Darling, for whom it is a wholesale projection about production at this level.

And do you really think Prey is worse this year than last? That also makes no sense to me.

I'm omitting commentary on Itzhak Pearlman, girls CYO basketball, Colorado weather reports, etc in the interest of staying focused on, you know basketball
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If I recall correctly last year thé early criticism of KR was that he didn’t play hard, I can’t recall anything else. Ability and talent we knew he had.
However he was a top 50 recruit with as you said a very solid prior track record.
Darling is physically much smaller and had a great sophomore season at à much lower mid major, not even sure if Idaho would classify as a mid-major.

By the way I met Itzhak Perlman 27 years ago at a friends house. À lovely man.
But I digress.
 
lawmanfan said:
I suspect that Boo's point was that whatever people foolishly thought about Kadary coming in, he had a four year track record of high level production at the high major level. So commentary about him bears no relationship to commentary about Darling, for whom it is a wholesale projection about production at this level.

And do you really think Prey is worse this year than last? That also makes no sense to me.

I'm omitting commentary on Itzhak Pearlman, girls CYO basketball, Colorado weather reports, etc in the interest of staying focused on, you know basketball
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1. Kadary is relevant to me. We were ecstatic with him coming in but trashed him anyway as slow , overweight, lazy, and bad attitude. Some even rolled back two seasons plus and said he wasn't all that good to begin with.

2. You're right about comparisons to Darling, but more recently there have been some guys who made a grand leap from mid major to high d1 and were better at this level. I agreed with your earlier comments about waiting till there was a body of work against top competition.

3. Yea, I think prey has not shown any improvement save for making a couple of threes. If anything, his defense has slipped, and he has not shown improvement down low. Again, it's a long season, and asserting yourself on a high caliber roster is not easy.

3. Comparisons to music, the weather, and girls Varsity (not cyo) basketball are for fans that aren't too knowledgeable able men's college basketball. It may, though, baffle those unfamiliar with women's varsity, classical music, or the weather.
 
Beasts of the East said:
1. Kadary is relevant to me. We were ecstatic with him coming in but trashed him anyway as slow , overweight, lazy, and bad attitude. Some even rolled back two seasons plus and said he wasn't all that good to begin with.
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Actually, Pitino himself publicly called out Kadary for being overweight and out of shape. Not surprising, then, that the fan base would agree with him. Although of course it all worked out in the end for Kadary.
 
lawmanfan said:
So here are some thoughts about Pitino at St. John's. Alert: long form read.

There is obviously no question that throughout his career he has been a terrific coach and a terrific developer of players. Non-debatable.

When he was hired, two of my concerns (acknowledging the above) were (a) given his long absence from high-level college basketball, whether he could adapt to the current environment; and (b) whether he could adapt to dealing with today's players. He certainly knocked the former out of the park and the latter has been totally fine - I don't think we've had any more bumps than anyone else and probably less than most, at least visibly.

My third concern was whether his approach would work in an era of significant annual roster turnover, and IMO that continues to be an open question.

In Year 1 he assembled a team that had some pieces. But he was determined to have them play the way he wanted to play, whether they fit into it or not. Whether you call it ego or inflexibility or confidence borne out of experience, he was certain he could get them to be what he wanted them to be. So in the meantime he decided he was going to give the ball to Jenkins and when the rest of them figured it out he would take it from there. As it turned out, the rest of them either didn't figure it out or did so late enough for it not to matter, and the result was that he relied on Jenkins to carry the team basically from beginning to end.

In Year 2, he assembled a team that had better pieces. Most notably, he got huge improvement out of Zuby in his second year in the system, and RJ and Wilcher were also in year 2. Kadary was not a problem because he is a unique player, unselfish and off-the-charts basketball IQ. In a down year for the Big East, with some roster continuity, and with a player who could out-athlete the rest of the league, Rick sort of reprised his Year 1 approach and just gave the ball to RJ. Which worked until it didn't.

Now we get to Year 3, and your continuity is again Zuby plus a few bench players. And he can't just give the ball to Zuby, not with Hopkins also there. But the roster - on paper -has a lot of talent, enough so that most writers (though not the metrics) had it as a top-5 team which clearly it is not. And there has been commentary about us getting off to a slow start, and the team taking time to gel, which is similar to the first two years (although the second one was not accompanied by losing games while it was coming together).

My view is that one of the things that makes Pitino great is that as a teacher of the game he demands players do 117 things, do them all, and do them all flawlessly, while also understanding how they fit into the overall plan, and playing together. And he is absolutely amazing at it.

HOWEVER, despite his coaching excellence, it takes players who come from other places time to absorb all of that, let alone execute it. And if you are going to turn over your roster every year, then no matter how talented the players you bring in are, it's going to take awhile before they "get it" and also do it. Of course there are exceptions like Kadary, but then there are exceptions in the other direction like Sanon and Jackson.

Not everyone handles roster turnover the same way. Kelvin Sampson wants his players to do like 4 things: hustle, defend, rebound, be physically tough. So he focuses on that and a few basic offensive concepts (plus player talent) and that is pretty easily absorbable by his players. McDermott has a system and he teaches his players the system; their opportunities fall naturally within that construct, for the most part. Dusty May at Michigan has a brand new team and has hardly hit a speed bump, not only due to talent but also due to giving his players a to-do list that they can handle. You can go down the list but the bottom line is that nobody - nobody - has as many demands as Pitino.

Does that make Pitino the best player-development coach the game has ever seen, perhaps? Yes. In earier eras where there was player continuity and he started each year with a core of players who knew the assignment, the carryover of his teaching from year to year made for tremendous success.

My question is whether the impact of roster turnover in the modern era is a tide that pushes enough in the other direction to offset Pitino's strengths. And it's especially exacerbated by the need to schedule tough OOC games in order to preserve ranking and metrics in years when the BE schedule (and the overall sports landscape) doesn't help you.

Sure there are some obvious specific issues with how this roster was put together, but to me that obscures the larger question of whether Pitino can get his team firing on all cyclinders early enough in the season every year while he's trying to teach middle-school kids college-level calculus. Given the right players, I think he can, but it is going to have to be a very specific and intentional thought process about what players to grab and (perhaps more importantly) what players to retain. Without some degree of continuity and careful selection of players who can absorb the teaching (as opposed to "hey, that guy has a lot of talent, grab him and I'm sure I can teach him"), I don't know if the program can reach the heights some expected under Pitino. Because I am pretty sure PItino is not going to change hs approach any time soon.

Could we do it anyway as the result of talent, his tactical greatness, and some luck? Absolutely. For this season, I happen to think that the team will continue to improve, will be better late than early, will be ranked at the end of the year, and will have a respectable seed going into the NCAA Tournament. And then with some matchup luck, we could make a deep run despite any of the other issues, because by then the team will be up to speed (or, as I mentioned somewhere else, fed to the alligators). But that is not (in my opinion) preferable to going in as a 1 or 2 seed, which is an easier road to the same place.

I'm going to defer judgment on whether I actually want player continuity with some of the guys on this year's roster if I have a choice about them. Right now I don't, but I also think they will get a lot better and I may have a different view later. The nice thing about college basketball is that players and teams develop over time, and (at least for me) one of the fun parts is watching that development take place. And I think Pitino does, too, that's why he's a teacher.
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I think this too much analysis. He just needs more established two-way players and better roster balance.

You shouldn’t have to develop guys in key spots to the level this roster requires in the NIL era.
 
Beasts of the East said:
2. You're right about comparisons to Darling, but more recently there have been some guys who made a grand leap from mid major to high d1 and were better at this level. I agreed with your earlier comments about waiting till there was a body of work against top competition.
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How many of those who made a grand leap were 6 feet tall and 175 lbs without being lightning quick or having in the gym range?
 
weathermannyc said:
How many of those who made a grand leap were 6 feet tall and 175 lbs without being lightning quick or having in the gym range?
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White Chocolate found his better playing weight at 240 so he could still drink beer. Even then he was 40 pounds over optimal weight
 
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