GOPHERS TO COME CALLING FOR DUTCHER?
Aztecs coach has smaller buyout for the Minnesota job
Minnesota basketball coach Richard Pitino took longer than usual in the locker room following the Gophers’ 78-74 loss at lastplace Nebraska last Saturday. It came two days after a home defeat that ended Northwestern’s 13-game losing streak.
Pitino said he talked to his players about enjoying the process, embracing the experience, loving “the time you have with your teammates.” Many of them, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, interpreted it as a farewell speech from their embattled coach, who has seven losing conference records in eight years and the only two winless road seasons in the last half-century of Gophers basketball.
A Star-Tribune columnist
wrote that “Richard has to go.” A sport talk radio host tweeted that Pitino already has met with Athletic Director Mark Coyle and his fate is sealed. Several blogs that cover Gopher sports have already speculated on
replacements.
What does any of this have to do with San Diego State?
Because buried on the third page of coach Brian Dutcher’s 2020 contract extension, under item 6 (g), is this sentence:
Should Employee accept head coaching position at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, … the buyout obligation shall be $1 million.
For anyone else, it is $6.925 million.
Dutcher’s father, Jim, coached at Minnesota from 1975 to 1985 and won the school’s last Big Ten men’s basketball title that wasn’t later vacated. Dutcher went to high school in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington and was a student manager for his father’s teams while getting a degree in physical education. His three sisters attended Minnesota as well. So did Jan, his future wife.
Jim Dutcher and most of their relatives still live in the Twin Cities.
Brian and Jan split their summer vacations between different family lake houses in the state.
“It’s my school,” Dutcher, 61, said when his new con
tract was finalized last September, “where I went and was able to be part of that basketball program with my dad. But it’s still a buyout. It’s not like it’s free.”
Dutcher declined comment Friday, as did SDSU Athletic Director John David Wicker. Coyle, the Minnesota AD, said he won’t discuss Pitino’s future until after the season.
That could be as soon as Wednesday, when the Gophers open the Big Ten tournament in Indianapolis likely as the 12th seed. They close the regular season this morning at home against Rutgers (9 a.m., Fox).
It certainly didn’t look like it would come to this in mid-January, when the Gophers were 16th in the Associated Press rankings and projected as a 5 seed in the NCAA Tournament after wins against Michigan, Iowa and Ohio State by a combined 40 points — currently Nos. 2, 5 and 7 in the AP poll. The 75-57 decision against Michigan on Jan. 16 remains one of just two blemishes on Michigan’s 19-2 record.
But the Gophers (13-13, 613) are 2-9 since and winless since starters Liam Robbins and Gabe Kulsheur went down with injuries. The last six losses are by an average of 14.2 points.
Pitino, the 38-year-old son of Hall of Famer Rick Pitino, won the NIT in his first season and was Big Ten coach of the year in 2017. But he has only two trips to the NCAA Tournament. Following a 15-16 record last season, Coyle issued a statement saying: “Richard understands my high expectations for our program, which is to compete at a championship level.”
Pitino makes $2.46 million per year on a contract that, thanks to three separate extensions, runs through 2023-24. Firing him before April 30 would cost the university $1.75 million, down from $7.1 million five years ago. After May, it owes him a $400,000 retention bonus.
Gopherhole.com already has listed its top 10 replacement candidates, five of which have Mountain West ties. Former Nevada and current Arkansas coach Eric Musselman, whose father, Bill, was Minnesota’s head coach immediately before Jim Dutcher, is No. 3. Colorado State’s Niko Medved, whose Rams are in second place behind SDSU and is also a Minnesota alum, is No. 2.
Dutcher is No. 1. Other rumored candidates include former Minnesota Timberwolves coach Ryan Saunders, whose father, Flip, played for Bill Musselman and Jim Dutcher at Minnesota; former Michigan coach John Beilein; Utah State’s Craig Smith; Cleveland State’s Dennis Gates; and Loyola Chicago’s Porter Moser.
“It’s Minnesota,” Wicker said last September about the buyout clause in Dutcher’s contract. “It means so much to him and his family. I feel comfortable if that’s something he really wanted to do, then OK. But I fully feel he has a better opportunity of being successful at San Diego State than he does in Minnesota. It would mean that he would want to go back for family-type reasons.”
Another possible reason: money.
Dutcher’s extension before incentives is worth $7.855 million, a Mountain West-best average of $1.3 million per year. It increases annually, from $930,000 this season to $1.53 million in 2025-26.
Pitino makes nearly twice that. Only three Big Ten coaches make less.
“This is where I’ve wanted to be,” Dutcher said last year, his 21st at SDSU as an assistant or head coach. “I learned a long time ago in coaching that if you’re going to take a job, have the best job in your conference. And I think San Diego State is the best job in the Mountain West.”
The same can’t be said for Minnesota, which has made six NCAA Tournament appearances in the 2000s. This will be the Aztecs’ eighth trip in the last 12 years (and would have been nine if last year’s tournament had been played). Over the last two seasons, they are 50-6 and have won back-to-back Mountain West titles.
Continuing that run of success, however, might require striking gold yet again in the transfer market. Four seniors start and another comes off the bench. The NCAA has granted all players an extra year of eligibility, but Matt Mitchell and Jordan Schakel aren’t expected to use it. The other three may not, either, and SDSU signed only one incoming freshman (and he is considered more of a project).
Pitino, meanwhile, prepares for Rutgers and the Big Ten tournament with a roster that has only one senior averaging more than 15 minutes.
“You understand that your boss has got to make tough decisions,” Pitino told media Tuesday. “And you’ve got to respect that. But I know he’s pulling for me.”