SEE THE NEW COACH
Public invited to Pitino’s introductory press conference Thursday
So on this day we welcome Richard Pitino to the state of New Mexico. Let’s do our best, as best as social distance will allow. A guy coming from eight years in the Land of 10,000 Lakes to the High Desert might feel like a fish out of water.
The smart bet is that Thursday and whenever he gets around to meeting us individually, Pitino will win the introductions and charm us. “Quick-witted, funny, but bright as a whip, both basketball-wise and common sense-wise” — as former Lobos assistant and Wyoming coach Larry Shyatt said to our Rick Wright.
Many of you already welcome his arrival another way. Our unscientific Journal online poll asking you to grade the hire says 64 percent give it an A or a B, only 16 percent a D or F as of late Wednesday. Speak Up! is running way more negative, which is predictable, but at the same time makes it hard to determine which way the winds are blowing on this.
We certainly are aware of the push-back — a paraphrase of it thusly: “Eddie Nuñez, are you for some reason trying to make Lobo Nation mad? Or are you just that intent on making your basketball family happy?”
You probably know that Nuñez played at Florida for Billy Donovan, who played at Providence for Rick Pitino, who is Richard’s father. Rick Pitino is the highly successful, also highly controversial coach who this week leads his fifth school, Iona, into the NCAA Tournament.
Donovan won two titles at Florida, and Pitino won both at Kentucky and Louisville, the latter vacated over NCAA violations alleging bribes to recruits and other assorted ugliness.
But all that also comprises undeniable, big-time basketball success, so naturally it’s understandable and expedient for Eddie the Lobo to go woofing up that basketball tree. And many
others echo what Shyatt said, that young Pitino is a class act through and through.
The concern is that the University of New Mexico needs so, so, so very badly for this to work, yet hires a 38-year-old coach cast off by another school because it didn’t.
And it’s not just Richard Pitino’s 54-96 record in conference play with only three finishes higher than 10th place over eight seasons in the rugged Big Ten. (Disclaimer: The Big Ten has 14 teams now, not just 10. Don’t freak out or, as one reader threatened, move to Las Cruces in panicked frustration.)
But those “back of the baseball card” numbers certainly aren’t great.
It left Nuñez on Tuesday making the media rounds and, at times, going on defense. Pitino assured Nuñez, the AD said, that he has learned from his mistakes — mainly that he didn’t develop enough depth on his lesser teams to offset injuries, which happen at every program, everywhere.
OK. Wouldn’t you rather have been more fired up to hear Nuñez instead rave about landing a coach who actually has been winning somewhere, and how he could duplicate that success here?
If this job, this university, this program, is still so highly esteemed nationally, as the AD insists, why was the hire so rushed? A week from today, 52 teams will have exited the 2021 NCAA Tournament, some with on-the-rise head coaches and assistants eager and then able to consider other opportunities.
(I think about Winthrop’s Pat Kelsey, but who knows. His team is 23-1 and might survive the long weekend.)
This also is troubling: While Pitino’s Gophers lost their last seven regular season games and finished 14-15, neighboring Wisconsin has reached the NCAA Tournament with seven kids from Minnesota on its roster. Pitino had three.
Who cares? We don’t expect him to recruit Minnesota kids to become Lobos anyway, right? And we’re lucky if our state produces one legit D-1 prospect a year besides.
It’s that the exodus of talent in recent years from a state with only the one Division I school is significant. Everybody’s NCAA favorite Gonzaga has a second-team All-America guard, Jalen Suggs, from the Twin Cities. ESPN’s toprated high school prospect in the Class of 2021 is Chet Holmgren, a 7-foot-1 center from Minneapolis. It lists seven schools as finalists for his commitment. The hometown team is one, but do you think Pitino would have been fired if he had a St. Paul snowball’s chance of landing him?
The point: If Minnesota wasn’t the place to be, will New Mexico?
Yet it’s incumbent upon young Mr. Pitino to reinvigorate the broader fan base, potential season-ticket buyers and, especially, draw players to a school that hasn’t even sniffed the postseason in seven years. If it’s not about his famous name, and the record is so unexciting, what do you sell?
In the meantime, Lobo types hope Rick Pitino’s words about his son from a Tuesday press conference prove prophetic:
“I know he’s going to do big things at New Mexico. I’ve had over 30 assistants go on to become head coaches, and he’s as good as any of them.”
We’re about to find out. It’s times like these when UNM basketball feels like the religion of increasingly desperate masses, and the scripture that matters is, “We walk by faith, not by sight.”