Written By Sam Ekstrom
The way people spoke of Richard Pitino in the months after his Gophers won the NIT Championship in his first year with the program, one might have assumed the son of coaching great Rick Pitino had just cut the down the nets in the Final Four. Rumors quickly swirled of Pitino being wooed by Tennessee, and features like this one from USA Today strengthened the notion that it won’t be long until the younger Pitino usurps his father at Louisville.
An 11-2 non-conference start with no résumé-wrecking losses, coupled with an apparent decline in the depth of the Big Ten, had Pitino-ites optimistic that the new coach was poised to stake his team to a top-five conference finish. But with less than two weeks gone of the Big Ten season, the praise has been replaced by vitriol as the winless Gophers sit last in the 14-team conference.
Articles have been written in this same space lately that point to Minnesota’s lack of depth and overall talent gap with upper-echelon Big Ten teams. Those are big picture problems that originate at higher points than the Williams Arena floor (which is still somewhat high in its own regard). But looking at the first quarter of the conference season with a narrow view, there are several glaring reasons why the Gophers have lost four straight.
Playing three of four on the road
“No coach in the Big Ten would want to do that,” said guard Andre Hollins about the early-season schedule. The Gophers began at Purdue, a place they haven’t won since Feb. 26, 2005. Then they moved on to Maryland, a brand new environment to Big Ten members and home to the no. 14-ranked Terrapins. After a brief trip home to face the then-ranked Ohio State Buckeyes, the Gophers headed back east to Ann Arbor, Mich., to face a Wolverines program that’s won eight NCAA tournament games over the last two seasons.
It’s the type of travel stretch that most teams in the conference have to endure at some point during the season, but it happened to hit the Gophers right out of the gate after they’d been lulled to sleep by 29 straight days at home that included six games against cupcake opponents.
“It’s tough to win on the road in the Big Ten. We know that,” said Pitino, whose 2013-14 team went 2-7 on the road in Big Ten play. “We’ve just got to break through.”
Home and road games, of course, always end up at nine and nine, respectively, by the end of the 18-game Big Ten season, and the Gophers get to enjoy five of their next seven at The Barn. Though, it’s never quite as easy to win with the fragile psyche of an 0-4 team as it might be if that same team was, say, 2-2, which is why the opening road stretch was so damaging for Minnesota.
Not getting much from Hollins
The first five halves of Big Ten basketball saw Andre Hollins make a total of three field goals. It was such an uncharacteristic bad spell that teammates were actually encouraged by his 3-for-13 performance against Ohio State. Backcourt mate DeAndre Mathieu spoke frankly, however, when he said after the game that he felt Hollins had been “forcing it a little bit.”
That fits with Hollins’ shot chart in the early stages of the conference campaign. In each of his first three seasons, Hollins shot either 53 or 54 percent of his field goal attempts from beyond the 3-point arc. Through the first four Big Ten games, the senior is taking 63 percent of his shots from 3, which could mean he’s settling instead of attacking.
It’s a known fact within the team that Hollins deals with bad hips, thereby keeping him from elevating. He also dealt with turf toe late in December but never took any games off to give it additional healing time.
It’s possible that Hollins, under the duress of a pair of nagging injuries, is laboring more than we can tell. However, the Memphis native scored 18 points against Michigan and worked his way to the free-throw line a season-high eight times; a step in the right direction.
Collapsing in second halves
It’s a problem known all too well to local teams: Failure to execute in late-game situations. The Gophers have been plagued in three of their four conference games by their inability to score in the closing minutes. In the conference opener, a 1-point deficit at Purdue became a 7-point deficit within the final minute when Minnesota couldn’t get a defensive stop in three straight opportunities – this coming after they blew a double-digit halftime lead.
Against the Buckeyes, the Gophers overcame that same double-digit halftime deficit but failed twice in final-shot scenarios. As regulation was expiring and the game was tied, Joey King chose to heave a shot from beyond midcourt with two seconds left when he could have passed the ball ahead or taken a couple more dribbles. Then, as overtime dwindled, DeAndre Mathieu turned the ball over when the Gophers needed a 2 to tie and a 3 to win.
Finally, in Ann Arbor, Minnesota was outscored 22-8 in the final 7 minutes, 41 seconds after leading by nine points at 49-40. Perhaps more egregious, the Gophers turned the ball over twice in the final minute and a half when trailing by two.
“Those turnovers were inexplicable,” Pitino said after the loss. “We didn’t allow ourselves to win the game. … You will not beat anybody – home, road, neutral – if you do that.”
Mismanaging timeouts
In two consecutive games, Pitino made, perhaps, a fatal mistake from the bench.
A week ago against Ohio State, the Buckeyes’ Marc Loving hit the go-ahead shot with 5.6 seconds remaining in overtime. Minnesota had one timeout, but Pitino elected not to use it. “I don’t really like calling timeout on that play,” said Pitino. “I like opening up the court and going and making a play.”
In Pitino’s defense, the college game is different the NBA game in that a timeout called after a made basket does not advance the basketball beyond midcourt. Plus, hindsight is always 20/20, so his decision looks worse in light of the result – a poor pass by Mathieu where the ball was deflected behind midcourt and left Nate Mason with a heave that may or may not have been released before the buzzer.
A timeout would have behooved the Gophers here because it would have likely guaranteed them a legitimate shot. There would have been a plan, at least, to get somebody curling around a screen and spotting up. Or maybe a clearout where Mathieu could have attacked the rim and tried to draw a foul.
Take a look at the freeze frame below to see how helter-skelter the Gophers were at this critical juncture. There are 3.3 seconds left and Mathieu is still about 25 feet away from the basket. Elliott Eliason is running right next to Mathieu, which draws traffic toward the ball, yet Eliason doesn’t even bother to set a ball screen. In fact, nobody set a screen in that 5.6-second sequence. The Buckeyes were doubling Mathieu since Joey King, the inbounder, was still jogging his way down court, as you can see in the picture. Mathieu said after the game he had wanted to get the ball back to King for a 3-point shot, which he was trying to do when the ball was knocked away. However, King was spotting up closer to half court than he was the 3-point line. Hence, a very low percentage shot in all likelihood.
In last Saturday’s contest against the Wolverines, Pitino drastically over-compensated with his timeout-usage. Instead of walking out of the arena with timeouts to spare, he used them up like they were contaminated with mumps. Pitino had three timeouts entering the second half and burned them all by the 4:48 mark, leaving his team with none during crunch time. With less than 90 seconds remaining, King made a terrific hustle play to dive on a loose ball, but as Wolverines swarmed him, the junior had no recourse other than making an ill-advised pass from his backside that resulted in a turnover.
There are plenty of makeshift timeouts in the college game due to media stoppages. Four times per half the game stops for an extended period – longer than a full timeout – so the networks can collect from their sponsors. When Pitino used up his final timeout, he was less than one minute away from a potential media stoppage.
Either Pitino really, really hates using late-game timeouts, as evidenced by the Ohio State game, or he felt like it was more pivotal to make a correction midway through the second half than to have a timeout in his back pocket down the stretch.
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Tonight: Minnesota looks to bounce back against Iowa (11-5 – 2-1) at Williams Arena. The Hawkeyes have conference wins over Ohio State and Nebraska with their one loss coming against Michigan State.
Sam Ekstrom is a staff writer for Cold Omaha at 105 The Ticket and a play-by-play broadcaster in Burnsville, Minn. Hear him on 105 The Ticket Sunday mornings from 8-10 a.m. on “The Wake Up Call.” Follow him on Twitter @SamEkstrom for further insights.