Minnesota fired Richard Pitino yesterday, and while the Golden Gophers are still without a head coach, Pitino has landed on his feet pretty quickly.
Landed in Albuquerque, to be specific, as Pitino will take over at the University of New Mexico. Pitino will replace Paul Weir, fired in February after four years and zero NCAA tournament appearances.
Pitino 🤝 The Pit
Welcome to Albuquerque, @CoachPitinoMN!#GoLobos | #WeAreNM
Story: https://t.co/xyYNxXLorK pic.twitter.com/sRuGG16FcO
— New Mexico Lobos (@UNMLOBOS) March 16, 2021
Pitino could never quite get Minnesota over the hump in the Big Ten; in his eight seasons in charge, his teams had just one season above .500 in conference play. Pitino also took the Gophers to two NCAA Tournaments (advancing to the round of 32 in 2019) and he won the NIT his first season in charge.
Pitino’s hire was met with mixed reviews from analysts:
Not convinced this Richard Pitino hire is gonna work at New Mexico. Has no ties to the area. Roll of the dice by AD Eddie Nunez IMO. https://t.co/iQSWgr7S7r
— Jeff Goodman (@GoodmanHoops) March 16, 2021
To be fair, New Mexico limiting their head coaching search based on geographical or other ties to UNM would be a pretty foolish and exclusionary way to run a coaching search. They’ve had coaches come in and find success before without those kinds of ties; Steve Alford, for example, left a different Big Ten program (Iowa) and set up shop at the Pit for a pretty successful run.
Does every coach who gets hired somewhere have to be either an alum or from the area? So bizarre you constantly bang this drum.
What were the ties for these rebuild jobs?
Drew – Baylor
Bennett – Virginia
McCaffrey – Iowa
Oats – Alabama
Musselman – Arkansas
Altman – Oregon— Michael Kudis (@MichaelKudis) March 16, 2021
Pitino’s name recognition is certainly still a valuable thing for him, and perhaps for a new school, too. That the move happened so quickly was the biggest surprise, but maybe it shouldn’t be; the Lobos job has been open for weeks now, and there have been rumblings that Pitino was likely on the way out for a while, too. It’s not hard to put together a back-channel scenario here.
Pitino will be able to take advantage of the current Covid transfer rules as well as plenty of other ways to jump-start a program in 2021, and he’s also getting out of the incredibly competitive Big Ten, one of the toughest conferences in recent college basketball memory.
In all, this feels like a pretty good hire; Pitino is only 38, and trading the upper Midwest for New Mexico probably has a lot of appeal, too.
