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Pitino will have a lot to answer for
Updated: Thursday March 22, 2001 9:01 AM
With a trio of schools apparently making their decisions on head basketball coaches, CNNSI.com talked to Sports Illustrated college basketball writer Seth Davis to get his thoughts on the new hires. CNNSI.com: Rick Pitino took the Louisville job. Is this a surprise? Davis: He certainly has the right to take whatever job he feels is in his and his family's best interests, so it's hard to begrudge him this. But it's extremely peculiar that he would go to Louisville given his relationship with the University of Kentucky and with Tubby Smith, even though the two are not that close, which I think is important to say. I don't know too many guys who would go from Lexington to Louisville like that. Suffice it to say, Pitino is an unusual breed. The bottom line is that he will win there, there's no doubt about that. It's also great for Conference USA, which had a dismal year. Now that league has both Pitino and John Calipari. CNNSI.com: Was this the best job he could have landed? Why didn't he take longer to consider others? Davis: From the beginning, Pitino insisted that he wanted to coach next year, which I think was a bad decision on his part. I think it would have been wise for him to sit out a year, gain some perspective, watch a few sunsets. If anybody in this world needs to watch a few sunsets, it's Rick Pitino. But he was facing dwindling opportunities. If he had waited, I think he would have been able to sift through other offers that would have allowed him to gain a high-quality job without having to tick off so many people at Kentucky who revered him. Let me add this: People who say that this move is not a big deal because Kentucky and Louisville are not in the same conference have no comprehension about this rivalry. It's completely irrelevant that they don't play in the same conference. But like I said, it's his right; he'll have to live with the consequences. CNNSI.com: What about the move by Indiana to retain Mike Davis? Davis: Bravo, Indiana. The administration didn't even go through the motions of looking at somebody else. I saw Davis' press conference, and he hit it right on the money when he made this comment about assistants: "I know a lot of people look for big names when they're searching for a coach, but it's not the name that counts. It's the work ethic." To me, that's the best thing I've heard come out of his mouth, and that's saying a lot. CNNSI.com: Given his comments early in the season about perhaps not being the right man for the job, does he have the resolve to handle this position? Davis: When he said that after the Kentucky game, it was a calculated move. People saw it as a guy unraveling under the pressure, but what he was doing was laying down the gauntlet to his players. I think the most important thing about Mike Davis -- and you can quibble all you want about his strengths and weaknesses -- is that his players love him. They came to Indiana because of him, they wanted him to be the guy when Bob Knight was fired, and they wanted him to keep the job. And he's not afraid to call on that. Coaching is all about recruiting players and building trust, and that's what Davis is really good at. Given the circumstances of his hiring and the lack of talent he had -- this was not a talented Indiana team -- given everything he had to work with, the administration could not have expected him to do a better job. So I truly commend Indiana for doing the right thing and hiring him. CNNSI.com: Which brings us to the man Davis replaced, Bob Knight, who reportedly will be hired by Texas Tech by the end of the week. Davis: Outside of the obvious, which is that it's hard to comprehend how anybody who considers himself or herself an educator can hire this man, it's as good a fit as you'll find for Knight. We always knew it would take an old crony type to hire him, and he would have to go to a place that did not have a winning tradition. Only a place like Texas Tech would be desperate enough to hire Bob Knight, who by his own admission has not changed one iota since he got fired. CNNSI.com: How long do you think he will behave? Isn't he just a time bomb waiting to explode? Davis: That's really hard to say. He's always going to be a time bomb. But the pressures at Texas Tech are different from the pressures at Indiana. Knight won't have the media scrutiny in Lubbock that he had in Bloomington. But he always created his own pressure and that's the risk you take with him. I'd like to see what the over/under is on the first time something happens, some incident where we'll go through the whole circus again. CNNSI.com: The bottom line is, can he win there? Davis: I think he will win there -- I don't think he'll win at a national-championship level, but compared to what Texas Tech has had in the past, yeah, he'll win. The most interesting thing will be to see whom he recruits there. It's not like he ever needed a ton of talent to win at Indiana. But you need that kind of top-level player if you want to win at a Final Four or national-championship level. But at Texas Tech, just to take the Red Raiders to the NCAA tournament, that's like a championship there.
Sports Illustrated staff writer Seth Davis covers college basketball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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