ADVERTISEMENT

Blue Blood Wins since 1980-1981 season

No way Ralph. We know that’s not the case with pitino. How do we know? Because you’ve got two types of champion coaches.

A. Champion coaches who cover the second title.

B. Champion coaches who don’t.

Calipari is more inline with the Boeheim tier. Pitino was very much in the K / Williams tier.

Pitino wanted that second ring so bad he was willing to do whatever it took. Calipari couldn’t care less. Had Pitino stayed he would have wanted the 3rd and 4th as well judging by his will to win. He would have been in a winning war and goat status chase with K for sure.
Yea, cause Pitino only coached UL, at least a top 10 program, for 17 years and won a single championship, which has since been vacated. Nothing about that says he would have won all kinds of titles at UK if he had stayed.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BigCat241
There's a caveat to this. Cal had almost identical success to Pitino in his first 6 years. Had Cal left in 2015, we would likely said the same thing about him, yet here we are 7-8 years later thinking the last few years certainly weren't like the first few.

But every coach does the same thing, periods of great success followed by periods of not the same level of success. The truly great ones are marked by their ability to rebound from the lull. Part of the reason Tubby's teams got worse after 1998 was the roster Pitino left. It was a great roster for 98, but the classes behind that were lacking, and formed a gap. Maybe Pitino could have won in 98, but the roster was not positioned to continue that success. And Pitino was never one to build his rosters around young talent.

So, in the end, had Pitino stayed, it may have been the equivalent to K, but it could have very easily mimicked Cal's career here as well. My hope for now is that Cal finds a way to rebound, and give us a good 2-3 year run before he rides off into the sunset.

Part of this kind of reads like you’re saying pitino was responsible for 2 or 3 recruiting classes AFTER he left. That seems a little unreasonable.

Also i think it’s a pretty safe bet that pitino would have continued his success here given that he went to 3 more final fours and won another title at a lesser program after that. (and no i don’t care how he won the title at UL at this point given that we’ve now seen all of Kansas, UNC and Duke win titles in the last 15 years under suspicious circumstances or even while under investigation for blatant and obvious cheating)
 
I do not approve of any of Pitino's off court scandals or personal life, however,
I think Pitino cemented his ability to change/win by his success at Louisville. He could never get the same quality recruits at Louisville as he did at Ky but he continued to win and IMO, overachieved considering what he had to work with.
He proved he could win with Providence in the 80's and is even overachieving at lowly Iona now. I would not be surprised to see him resurrect himself once again. He seems to have 9 lives.... and I suspect he has many, many regrets that he would like to atone for.
Overachieved? At Louisville? What in the world are you smoking
He was there something like 15 seasons. He was definitely getting good enough recruits to compete . Pitino was never known for getting the top recruits even at UK
 
Part of this kind of reads like you’re saying pitino was responsible for 2 or 3 recruiting classes AFTER he left. That seems a little unreasonable.

I think, other than PG, Tubby recruited very well in his first few years with Michael Bradley, Prince/Allison/Camara, Bogans/Stone/Estill, Parker/Fitch/Daniels/Hawkins, but 4 of those guys left or were dismissed (plus Carruth)

So I don't know if he just landed the top guys that no one else wanted to deal with or if he just had bad luck. Also, we add a very good roster in 98/99. They were pre-season top 4 and stayed in the top 10 nearly all year and won the SEC tournament. The issue in those three years at the turn of the century was having key players leave and the PG play not being good enough.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Montana81
Part of this kind of reads like you’re saying pitino was responsible for 2 or 3 recruiting classes AFTER he left. That seems a little unreasonable.

Also i think it’s a pretty safe bet that pitino would have continued his success here given that he went to 3 more final fours and won another title at a lesser program after that. (and no i don’t care how he won the title at UL at this point given that we’ve now seen all of Kansas, UNC and Duke win titles in the last 15 years under suspicious circumstances or even while under investigation for blatant and obvious cheating)
What I am saying is that Pitino teams were always built mainly around Juniors and Seniors, with maybe a young guy or two. Nothing like Cal does it. And when Tubby took over, the Senior class was very good, and a couple of Juniors were good, but not much behind them. Here was Pitino's last 3 classes:

Turner, Mohammed, Mercer, Lathram, Simmons
Masiello, Magloire
Bradley, Anthony, Hogan

The turner class turned out very good and played a big part in the 98 championship, in part because Mohammed developed very well. However, Mercer left after 97, so Turner and Mohammed were all the high level contributors that remained from that class. In his last 2 recruiting classes, he got 1 great, 1 really good, and 3 not good at all players, and that was what was left for Tubby.

As for the continued success under Pitino, while I agree UL is a lesser program, it isn't that much of a lesser program. It is a top 6 or 7 program in the country, and a program that obviously was willing to do whatever it took to succeed. Pitino was there for like 17 years to get that 1 extra championship and handful of final fours. May blow your mind, but he actually coached UL almost twice as long as he coached UK. The odds are really, really high that had Pitino stayed, we would have the exact same number of championships today that we have.

For all those that want to knock on Cal for needing the #1 and #2 draft pick to win a championship at UK, Pitino's lone championship at UK was with arguably the greatest team ever assembled. A team that had 9 players that played at some point in the NBA. A team that had several lottery picks on it stretched out over several classes. Nothing about that, or his time at UL indicates that he would have produced 3 or 4 more championships. He got 1 in 17 years at UL.
 
ADVERTISEMENT