It's one of the rare "free" articles over there and it's pretty long but to many it will be worth it. Particularly anybody who may have said that Pitino was a good hire...
Jon Krawczynski Retweeted
Brian Hamilton@_Brian_Hamilton 1h1 hour ago
More wins. New facilities. Five-star recruits within state lines. Could this be Minnesota's moment? *Free* read: http://bit.ly/2z7kT3u
"Only four years ago, Richard Pitino was a 30-year-old head coach in the Big Ten who thought better of complaining about anything, including an infrastructure inferior to peer programs. Now, he sits in an office just steps away from literal and figurative progress, with a team primed to contend behind an emerging homegrown star. Now he runs the only Division I hoops program in a state experiencing an up-cycle in basketball talent. This looks like Minnesota’s moment. Well, this looks like it could be Minnesota’s moment if it can seize upon some new advantages while fending off recruiting predators from all sectors of college basketball. “People always ask, if you win, are you going to leave?” Pitino says. “We got it all here. We didn’t have that. We now have it.”
Yes, some of it is in place, like the good vibes from a curative 24-victory season and Amir Coffey, the Hopkins, Minn., native who is a candidate to be one of the Big Ten’s breakout performers. Yes, some of it is still on its way, like the sparkling new facilities and another trio of promising in-state recruits. It’s a piece-by-piece process. That’s how it works when you’re trying to build something significant.
But you do have to finish the job...
It’s instructive to note that same Howard Pulley team featured three Minnesota commits in the Class of 2018: four-star forward Daniel Oturu and three-star prospects Jarvis Thomas and Gabe Kalscheur. And the line of elite talents doesn’t end with Tre Jones. Matthew Hurt, a 6-9 forward from Rochester, Minn., is five-star, top 5 recruit from the Class of 2019. Cast your eye even farther toward the horizon, and you find 6-3 guard Jalen Suggs of Minneapolis, another national top 5 prospect in the Class of 2020.
While basketball always has had an ardent following in Minnesota, the state itself produced just six McDonald’s All-Americans from the event’s inception in 1977 through 2013. (Hibbing, Minn., native Kevin McHale graduated high school in 1976.) Four of them opted to stay home and play for the Gophers. While Jim Petersen helped the team win the 1982 Big Ten title, in-state talent simply hasn’t offered a program-altering paradigm.
Then came 2014. Three Minnesotans — Tyus Jones, Rashad Vaughn and Reid Travis — earned McDonald’s All-America honors that spring. A fourth member of that class, J.P. Macura, ranked just outside the top 100. None of them chose to play for Minnesota. The current batch of high schoolers was far along their basketball paths by then, but that quartet was nevertheless representative of an emerging dynamic in the high school ranks as well as a sign of things to come. “You really started to see Minnesota more on the map from a national perspective,” says Spencer Tollackson, a former Mr. Basketball from Chaska, Minn., and now a radio analyst for Minnesota basketball. “A little of it was lightning in a bottle, where there’s that many five-star recruits in one class. It’s not like Minnesota is producing a class like it did in ’14 year-in and year-out. That being said, you don’t even have that once-in-a-20-year opportunity if there isn’t an increase in interest and the sheer number of people that are playing.”
Or put another way by Richard Hurt, the father of Matthew Hurt and part-owner of D1 Minnesota, one of the state’s premier AAU programs: “Success breeds success, and [kids] want to be a part of that.”
Between the 2014 group and the forthcoming 2018 class, Minnesota has produced 11 top 150 recruits. Anecdotally, the increase in top talent generally distills to this: An increased demand for youth basketball outlets met with supply. D1 Minnesota, for example, has been in existence for nine years. Richard Hurt joined the ownership group three years ago, when the program comprised three teams. “As of this year,” he says, “we have 11.” Per a Minneapolis Star-Tribune story in May, clubs statewide fielded more than 80 teams that played at least five games in the AAU 17U circuit during the summer of 2016. And according to Hurt, eight Class of 2017 players on D1 Minnesota’s top team collected a total of more than 130 offers from Division I schools. Growth in the availability of year-round basketball for players as young as eight or nine seemingly has improved the depth of talent available at the high school level. And the highest-level players may have opened eyes for everyone else...
https://theathletic.com/142069/2017/11/02/could-this-really-be-minnesotas-moment-oh-you-betcha/
Jon Krawczynski Retweeted
Brian Hamilton@_Brian_Hamilton 1h1 hour agoMore wins. New facilities. Five-star recruits within state lines. Could this be Minnesota's moment? *Free* read: http://bit.ly/2z7kT3u
"Only four years ago, Richard Pitino was a 30-year-old head coach in the Big Ten who thought better of complaining about anything, including an infrastructure inferior to peer programs. Now, he sits in an office just steps away from literal and figurative progress, with a team primed to contend behind an emerging homegrown star. Now he runs the only Division I hoops program in a state experiencing an up-cycle in basketball talent. This looks like Minnesota’s moment. Well, this looks like it could be Minnesota’s moment if it can seize upon some new advantages while fending off recruiting predators from all sectors of college basketball. “People always ask, if you win, are you going to leave?” Pitino says. “We got it all here. We didn’t have that. We now have it.”
Yes, some of it is in place, like the good vibes from a curative 24-victory season and Amir Coffey, the Hopkins, Minn., native who is a candidate to be one of the Big Ten’s breakout performers. Yes, some of it is still on its way, like the sparkling new facilities and another trio of promising in-state recruits. It’s a piece-by-piece process. That’s how it works when you’re trying to build something significant.
But you do have to finish the job...
It’s instructive to note that same Howard Pulley team featured three Minnesota commits in the Class of 2018: four-star forward Daniel Oturu and three-star prospects Jarvis Thomas and Gabe Kalscheur. And the line of elite talents doesn’t end with Tre Jones. Matthew Hurt, a 6-9 forward from Rochester, Minn., is five-star, top 5 recruit from the Class of 2019. Cast your eye even farther toward the horizon, and you find 6-3 guard Jalen Suggs of Minneapolis, another national top 5 prospect in the Class of 2020.
While basketball always has had an ardent following in Minnesota, the state itself produced just six McDonald’s All-Americans from the event’s inception in 1977 through 2013. (Hibbing, Minn., native Kevin McHale graduated high school in 1976.) Four of them opted to stay home and play for the Gophers. While Jim Petersen helped the team win the 1982 Big Ten title, in-state talent simply hasn’t offered a program-altering paradigm.
Then came 2014. Three Minnesotans — Tyus Jones, Rashad Vaughn and Reid Travis — earned McDonald’s All-America honors that spring. A fourth member of that class, J.P. Macura, ranked just outside the top 100. None of them chose to play for Minnesota. The current batch of high schoolers was far along their basketball paths by then, but that quartet was nevertheless representative of an emerging dynamic in the high school ranks as well as a sign of things to come. “You really started to see Minnesota more on the map from a national perspective,” says Spencer Tollackson, a former Mr. Basketball from Chaska, Minn., and now a radio analyst for Minnesota basketball. “A little of it was lightning in a bottle, where there’s that many five-star recruits in one class. It’s not like Minnesota is producing a class like it did in ’14 year-in and year-out. That being said, you don’t even have that once-in-a-20-year opportunity if there isn’t an increase in interest and the sheer number of people that are playing.”
Or put another way by Richard Hurt, the father of Matthew Hurt and part-owner of D1 Minnesota, one of the state’s premier AAU programs: “Success breeds success, and [kids] want to be a part of that.”
Between the 2014 group and the forthcoming 2018 class, Minnesota has produced 11 top 150 recruits. Anecdotally, the increase in top talent generally distills to this: An increased demand for youth basketball outlets met with supply. D1 Minnesota, for example, has been in existence for nine years. Richard Hurt joined the ownership group three years ago, when the program comprised three teams. “As of this year,” he says, “we have 11.” Per a Minneapolis Star-Tribune story in May, clubs statewide fielded more than 80 teams that played at least five games in the AAU 17U circuit during the summer of 2016. And according to Hurt, eight Class of 2017 players on D1 Minnesota’s top team collected a total of more than 130 offers from Division I schools. Growth in the availability of year-round basketball for players as young as eight or nine seemingly has improved the depth of talent available at the high school level. And the highest-level players may have opened eyes for everyone else...
https://theathletic.com/142069/2017/11/02/could-this-really-be-minnesotas-moment-oh-you-betcha/
