I agree with this. LilāRichard is not my first choice. Iād prefer Shaka or Byington first. But those two may be un-gettable for reasons that have nothing to do with UVA. If we are compelled to go for a second-tier āriser,ā Richard wouldnāt be a bat roll of the dice.
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Yeah this is sort of what I was getting at, a big part of the reason I am higher on Calhoun than Odom.
The guys that are regional recruiting specialists like Vandross seem fairly common while true Xās and Oās geniuses are not (or theyāre in the NBA).
I donāt think Sanchez would stick around if not given the job, would he? I thought about this the other day and sort of chalked it up as a definite no.
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Iām in on Little Richard if it means we play St Johns in MSG next year
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lol - at Minnesota he won 24 and 25 games as his most there.
Both are more than Tubby Smith could do in 6 years there.
Also more than Dan Monson (the guy who started the Gonzaga juggernaut and probably wished he had stayed instead of going to Minnesota) could do in 8 years there.
Also more wins than all 13 Clem Haskins seasons there except the 1 outlier Final 4 team in 1997. They had 5 dudes who saw action in the NBA.
So thatās 2 seasons with more wins than all but 1 season in the previous 100 years.
Edit - I would be remiss not to mention the 1990 Haskins version that was really good and lost in the Elite 8 to one of my all time favorite ACC teams - Lethal Weapon 3 at Georgia Techā¦ in that Elite 8 gameā¦ Dennis Scott had 40, Kenny Anderson 30 and Brian Oliver 19 in a 93-91 thriller. Everybody else combined was 2/4 field goal attempts
Fun trivia - who was the most famous dude on the Golden Gophers 1972 tournament team that lost to Florida State?
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Only old Gophers I can name are Kevin McHale, Flip Saunders and Mychael Thompson and theyāre all too young to be on the 72 team I think.
Oh and the original Muss Bus coached there.
Did something happen between Pitino and local HS coaches? Iām wondering why he couldnāt keep the few great HS players from Minnesota home. Or at least the Jones brothers and the Gonzaga guys (Suggs and Holmgren).
He spent 8 years at a program that has exactly 2 single digit losing seasons in his life!
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Pitino is growing on me. As an added wrinkle, can imagine a world where his dad becomes a de facto program ambassador post-retirement in a few years. People laugh, but he clearly still has juice/cache.
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I mean we just watched Tony Bennett lose almost every top in-state kid to Blue Bloods for a decade and a half. Any kid from Minnesota who has a choice between Minnesota and somewhere better than Minnesota is almost guaranteed to go somewhere better than Minnesota.
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One thing I try to keep in mind when looking at potential candidates is Iām not sure how much before 2022 matters.
Itās a totally different set of rules, and success the last 2-3 years in this new landscape holds more weight for me than what happened in 2015. TB was HOF level before the rules changed, then we became average pretty quick. On the flip side, if someone excels using NIL and the portal, should we DQ them because they werenāt as good under the old system?
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Richard Pitino is exactly the type of hire that would get me excited. Obviously huge boom or bust, but maybe thatās why Iām so intrigued. the upside is tantilizing
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Is it harder to be good at Minnesota or Utah State?
Also, Minnesota fired him. Would they take him back as head coach?
Jim Brewer is the guy who I think had the longest career in the NBA. As far as fame, Iām going to say it was the baseball player who killed a seagull in Toronto when he threw a ball back to the dugout. It prompted his famous manager to say it was the first time he hit the cutoff man all season 
. Even though I didnāt mention the name, I think that gave it away.
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Suggs claims Richard didnāt recruit him. Iāve heard Minnesota fans be skeptical of that claim, so 
Others, too:
Odom > Pitino easy
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My view of Odom v Pitino is that they seem to be roughly in the same tier. Just depends how much you value experience in P5 for Richard vs ānever had those kinds of resourcesā for Odom.
Iām seeing a lot of rosy painting of Richardās Minnesota tenure. It was not good!** Look at his overall and B10 records. Donāt get fooled by his efficiency (Kenpom and torvik) metrics. They donāt know how to deal with peer effects very well, IMO.
Not that important to me that he lost to good teams by 9 rather than the 15 he was supposed to, or whatever.
** But heās older and maybe wiser and maybe has figured out a thing or two at NM
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Louisville and Oklahoma are two tales of the same story: The hire matters but how well resourced you are also matters. Kelsey got supported by Louisville. Oklahoma is the worst financed basketball program in the SEC and Porter Moser lost Otega Oweh (Kentucky) and Javian McCollum (Georgia tech) and I think one other guy to Houston.
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Iāve also read interviews with Suggs saying he wanted to go to a school without a football team so he wouldnāt feel pressured or tempted to play football. So 
?
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Havenāt watched any Utah State, but is there something specific about Calhounās style that would lead to them being such an outlier on this chart? Not conceding any big runs but not scoring any of their own to that extreme feels weird with the zone reliance
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I agree that the game is fundamentally different than it was pre-2022. However, I do think that the 2022-2025 years have also been different from what the next 10 years will be because of Covid year players and completely unregulated NIL.
My guess is that the game normalizes out somewhere in between the pre-2022 and 2022-2025 years (probably closer to 2022-2025). But the lack of clarity around NIL regulation, transfer portal etc. make hiring a coach even more of a crapshoot.
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