RandBall: Richard Pitino has thrived as the Gophers have struggled

Revisionist history isn’t very useful, but boy does it sometimes reveal an irony from the past.

Like this: As the Gophers embark on a men’s basketball coaching search, the man fired by AD Mark Coyle four years ago is one of the hottest commodities to be hired.

This is not to suggest at all that Richard Pitino is a candidate to return to Minnesota. That would be a strange reunion to say the least, and he does not appear anywhere near Marcus Fuller’s cultivated list of potential coaching options.

But it is rich to note that the first coach on the list, Colorado State’s Niko Medved, makes it there on the strength of recent NCAA tournament appearances and a strong showing again this year in the Mountain West with a 16-4 regular-season conference record.

The only team to finish above the Rams this year? Pitino’s New Mexico squad, which finished 17-3 and looks primed to make the NCAA field for the second consecutive season.

Most of us agreed with Coyle’s decision in 2021 to fire Pitino. But we can also now say that Pitino’s next chapter in New Mexico has further revealed him to be a quality coach, particularly for this era of college basketball — something I talked about on Friday’s Daily Delivery podcast.

Notably, Pitino has built a roster leaning heavily on transfers. While he hasn’t quite gone the way of his more famous father Rick, who is basically eschewing high school recruiting altogether while transforming St. John’s back into a national powerhouse, the Lobos have benefited greatly from the portal.

Pitino’s Lobos have built that roster without outlandish NIL spending. This site estimates their collective distributed less money last year than the average Mountain West school and projects New Mexico to be middle-of-the-pack in revenue sharing contributions starting next season.

Might Pitino, with more coaching experience and connections, have been a better fit in Minnesota in the past four seasons as the college game transformed so rapidly?

It’s a fair question to ask, though maybe a less fair question to answer definitively.

Pitino, too, might have struggled as Johnson did to retain players. The biggest what-if of the entire Johnson era is how this year’s team would have fared if not for the transfers of Elijah Hawkins and Pharrel Payne.

Those two stalwarts from last year’s ascending team left for a pair of high-profile Texas schools for a reported combined $1.4 million, a figure with which the Gophers could not compete.

As for Pitino? His Lobos host Boise State on Friday night in the Mountain West semifinals. By the end of the weekend, they will almost certainly be in the NCAA tournament field again. Beyond that? Maybe a promotion to a Power-5 job, even perhaps 2019 NCAA champion Virginia.