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Pitino won't resurface just yet
Sports Illustrated staff writer Seth Davis spoke with CNNSI.com about the goings-on in the college basketball world this week: CNNSI.com: It was quite a week on the Rick Pitino front. It seemed like there was a different story every day indicating that Pitino was going to take a job somewhere. Now Pitino is saying he will wait until the end of the season to make a decision. What happened? Seth Davis: It was quite the week last week -- it felt a lot like election night. It hasn't been a great year for network prognostications, but basically Rick Pitino, I think, made two mistakes. First of all, he jumped into this process way too soon. And he was also way too eager to share all of his thoughts with the public. He might have gotten too caught up with being the center of all the attention. People who I have spoken to who talked to Pitino of late have been struck by how little he really knows about college basketball right now because he hasn't been following the game all that closely. I think it is starting to dawn on him that UNLV might not be such a great situation for him. The school's athletic director is in Florida right now talking with Pitino, but I just don't think a deal is going to be coming out of there. My guess is that Pitino will be coaching somewhere in college next year, but we probably won't know until the end of this season just exactly where that will be. CNNSI.com: One of the strangest episodes in the Pitino drama unfolded at UCLA, where athletic director Peter Dalis revealed that he had spoken with Pitino even though he already has a coach in Steve Lavin. What effect will that have on the program's future? Davis: I talked to Steve Lavin about this and he is still pretty disheartened about what the athletic director Peter Dalis did, admitting publicly that he had spoken with Pitino the day after he told Lavin he never had spoken to Pitino. Lavin talked about not only what it did to him but also what it did to his team, which has been playing pretty well of late. They've won five in a row now, they beat USC and Villanova last week. It seems that Dalis has achieved the impossible in turning Lavin into a sympathetic figure. What he also did was force Pitino to state publicly that he is not interested in the UCLA job, which I don't think is the case. Lavin told me he is approaching the situation like an interim coach, which is how he started after UCLA fired Jim Harrick. Lavin knows that if the team continues to do as well as it has, it's going to be very hard for Dalis to fire him. CNNSI.com: Let's turn to the action on the court. Ninth-ranked Georgetown is one of the hottest teams in the country. The Hoyas beat Seton Hall Monday night to stay undefeated. Do you see them being a factor in the NCAA tournament? Davis: I think they will be. There are a lot of us who are skeptical about Georgetown because the Hoyas played such an easy pre-conference schedule. But having beaten Seton Hall twice now is very convincing. Georgetown has been playing tenacious defense for the last two years, but now they are also putting points on the board. They lead the Big East in scoring, Kevin Braswell has really matured at the point guard spot and Lee Scruggs at 6-fooot-11 is a real dynamic offensive talent; he may be one of the best three-point shooters in the country. One thing that Craig Esherick mentioned to me is that because he has a rotation of 10 players he really feels that he can subsitute the way that he wants to, which hasn't been the case there the last few years. So, yes, I think a lot of us were skeptical of Georgetown at first, but right now I think you have to say they are the favorite to win the Big East. Sports Illustrated staff writer Seth Davis covers the college basketball beat for themagazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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