Pitino in The Pit
Richard Pitino was in the unemployment line less than 24 hours.
Fired Monday night (March 15) as the men’s basketball coach at the University of Minnesota, the 38-year-old was named the new coach at the University of New Mexico on Tuesday morning. He replaces Paul Weir, whose disappointing four-year run as Lobos coach ended with last week’s early exit from the Mountain West Conference Tournament.
Pitino is the son of coaching Hall of Famer Rick Pitino and a former assistant to his father at Louisville and Billy Donovan at Florida. It was during his time with Donovan that the younger Pitino developed a national reputation as a top-flight recruiter, helping land a number of high-profile players while with the Gators and at Louisville.
He was part of one Final Four run and three trips to the Elite Eight while an assistant at those schools before landing his first head coaching job at the age of 29 at Florida International in 2012.
“My wife Jill, our children and I are very excited to join the Lobo family,” Pitino said in a release. “I want to extend my sincere thanks to [UNM President Garnett] Stokes, [athletic director] Eddie Nuñez and [associate AD] David Williams for extending this opportunity. Lobo basketball holds a special place in the hearts of New Mexicans, and I cannot wait to get started.”
Nuñez said he wasn’t sold on the idea of hiring Pitino until Monday night.
“At the end of the day, last night, it was my gut feeling. It was what I had been feeling through the last couple of interviews or opportunities we had to sit down with Richard,” Nuñez said in a Zoom call with local media Tuesday afternoon. “This is the guy. This is the guy who I can see help lead the program. This is the guy who I want in our department, you know, running this program.”
Pitino inherits a UNM program in disarray. The Lobos finished last in the Mountain West this season. Three players quit the team before the end of the season, and three more voluntarily sat out the final two games for undisclosed reasons.
Pitino already has spoken to most of the players, Nuñez said, and has plans to meet the rest when he arrives in Albuquerque on Wednesday night. The school has scheduled an introductory news conference Thursday (March 18).
Aside from personnel issues, the Lobos have seen a steady decline in attendance the past few years. The most recent season played in The Pit – the pre-COVID-19 2019-20 campaign – dipped below 11,000 fans per game for just the second time in school history. All four seasons under Weir saw average home attendance fall below 12,000, easily the lowest stretch in the 54-year history of The Pit.
“I knew right from the beginning this is a guy who can really resonate really well with our fan base,” Nuñez said. “Richard is here because Richard is the right coach, and he’s the right coach for us, he’s the right coach for this program and for this state. I truly believe it.”
UNM has similarly struggled on the court. The Lobos have gone seven straight seasons without a postseason berth and haven’t won at least 20 games since former coach Craig Neal’s first season in 2013-14.
Pitino was hired at Minnesota when he was 30 years old and led the Golden Gophers to the NIT title his first season. He took the team to a pair of NCAA Tournament appearances and was named the Big Ten coach of the year in 2017 after a 24-10 season and an NCAA berth a year after the team finished 8-23.
He is 159-137 in nine years as a head coach and was 141-123 in his time with Minnesota. He was, however, more than 40 games below .500 (54-96) against Big Ten competition, and the Gophers never finished higher than fourth place in the regular season.
This season’s team stumbled to the finish, losing its final seven games and 10 of its final 12 in the regular season amid a rash of injuries to key players. Before things fell apart, the Gophers won their first six games and had wins against No. 4 Iowa and No. 7 Michigan, No. 17 Michigan State and No. 25 Illinois.
They went 0-10 on the road, however, and by midseason there were rumors in the Twin Cities about Pitino’s job security. Minnesota’s second-round exit from the Big Ten Tournament last week sealed his fate.
Pitino’s connection to Nuñez goes back to Florida and the Donovan coaching tree. Nuñez played for Donovan at Florida in the late ‘90s, while Pitino joined the coaching staff about a decade later. Nuñez said he only had brief interactions with Pitino over the years, but it was their mutual relationship with Donovan that brought them together after Weir’s dismissal Feb. 26.
Pitino interviewed with Nuñez and Williams in Chicago on March 12. The finalists for the job were Pitino and former Nebraska coach Tim Miles.
“It’s hard for people to understand outside of New Mexico, but the way people view this program is so high, and it has earned that because of the passionate fan base that we have,” Nunez said. “There’s not many places that coaches can sit here today and say, ‘You know what, that program has a fan base that we can really make something happen with.’ Take out all the money, take out all the different factors that’s involved. It’s about: Can you make it happen with what’s in place?”
Pitino’s salary at Minnesota was $2.1 million, a figure that fell below the median for Big Ten coaches. Terms of his Minnesota contract call for a buyout of approximately $1.7 million. It’s not immediately clear what money is owed to him.
Nuñez said Pitino’s New Mexico contract would be similar to that of Weir’s. Hired away from New Mexico State in 2017, Weir was making approximately $775,000 annually at the time of his dismissal, with an additional $50,000 retention bonus being paid to NMSU for his early exit from his contract.
Nuñez said Pitino’s deal would be backloaded with incentives that make the tail end of the contract more lucrative than the start. The contract would be in the range of five to six years.
Only one of Weir’s assistants, Dan McHale, remains under contract with UNM. McHale has direct ties to the Pitino family, having gotten his coaching start as a graduate assistant to Rick Pitino at Louisville from 2001-03. He then joined Minnesota’s staff when Richard Pitino was hired, serving on the staff that ended with the Gophers’ NIT championship in 2014.
Nuñez said he would not interfere with how Pitino assembles his staff.