Pitino told team to give up: "With 2:19 left and a 15-point lead, Michigan State called a timeout....

now i've ditched my fire pitino mantra of the past couple years

but this makes me want to puke. how can he tell the team to quit like that? sure the other team was up big, but you don’t just tell them to give up! even the poopkoop doesn’t do that sort of garbage.

i honestly think we’ll hear an announcement within a couple days that rick has left for another program. the signs are everywhere: his players stopped respecting him (twill breaking curfew and fighting with him in the huddle), him telling players to quit, him slipping off the court quietly without even consoling his players. my guess is that rick has pulled the ole John L. on us.

by davidson07 on Mar 30, 2009 9:33 AM EDT reply actions

I don't think he is going anywhere....

but you know what? Even if he were to take off (and I doubt that) U of L would be just fine. We ARE the University of Louisville Basketball Program after all. One coach (MY coach) was here for over 30 years and RP chose U of L over every other program in the country….U of L is BIGGER than ANY coach.

by Linda on Mar 30, 2009 10:36 AM EDT up reply actions

There's a little more to it.

“He told us to keep playing with our heads up,” senior Will Scott said. “He told us to finish it the right way, to not foul, to end the game with class, to not do anything to mar what has been a great season.”

by mp502 on Mar 30, 2009 10:09 AM EDT reply actions

Pretty big piece of the puzzle that was left out.

by CARD_G6 on Mar 30, 2009 11:29 AM EDT up reply actions

in the sense that he told them

“dont try to win, just try to lose with dignity”

if i were twill i would’ve fought with him too. i’ve seen teams down bigger deficits not quit, and i’ve certainly seen coaches down bigger deficits not quit.

by davidson07 on Mar 30, 2009 11:45 AM EDT up reply actions

hey everybody

My name is davidson07 and I like to put up fake quotes from pitino…try to pass them off as being legit. I oftentimes have trouble maintaining an erection.

by kidbourbon on Mar 30, 2009 2:16 PM EDT up reply actions

Yeah, it doesn't sound like he was telling them to quit

Just to play with class at the end of the game.

by kidbourbon on Mar 30, 2009 11:08 AM EDT reply actions

??

why are you always so down on Pitino?

by twistedwedge on Mar 30, 2009 12:11 PM EDT reply actions

Let's see....

wasn’t Pitino the coach for one of the greatest comebacks ever? (UK over LSU) Anyone remember the comeback we had against Tennessee? Who was our coach then? Come on dude, you can’t possibly be serious…

by louisvillains on Mar 30, 2009 1:32 PM EDT reply actions

Propaganda

so i learned in class just today how propoganda plays negative roles on peoples perceptions… and if i did not read the comments below this to see the rest of the quote than i would prob have been pretty pissed

BUT COMMON MAN… GIVE US THE WHOLE STORY before you try to get us to turn our back on a man who has meant so much to our program… YOU (davidson) SIR ARE A FOOL!

by Chicago's Cardinal 3 on Mar 30, 2009 2:12 PM EDT reply actions

the quote up top is real, but it's taken out of context

it makes it seem like pitino was already heading home before the final buzzer. he knew we couldn’t come back from being down. it wasn’t just the number of points we were down, there were a lot of reasons we couldn’t come back. if you read the rest of it, it’s clear he just wanted the players to keep the positive aspects of the season in mind, and go out with some class.

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20090330/COLUMNISTS02/903300338/1002/SPORTS

by mp502 on Mar 30, 2009 2:19 PM EDT reply actions

There is something to be said about grace in defeat

by SpeedStudent on Mar 30, 2009 3:10 PM EDT reply actions

After reading the WHOLE article,

I came away with quite a different interpretation than Rick is pulling a John L…..sounds like he was telling the guys not to let emotions rule these last 2 minutes with some kind of stupid play or bad foul…..I’d be surprised if Rick left, but like Linda said, we would endure.

Go Cards!

by Red Rage on Mar 30, 2009 3:26 PM EDT reply actions

My 2 cents

Pitino’s quote was more than likely said to keep us from fouling and keep things form getting ugly. There were plenty of occurrences early in the game where the refs had to step in to calm down players and keep players from talking trash to each other. Combine that with the fact that our players were upset about how their season was falling apart, things could have gotten ugly quickly with a dumb foul or too hard of a push. Had UL gone out from that timeout and hit 2 threes to close the gap to single digits and 1:30-2 minutes left, yeah, things change. Nowhere in there did I get the feeling Pitino wanted the players to take their feet off the gas or stop trying, just don’t give up and become classless. Nothing he had seen during the game (we never made a run, they were hitting FT’s, we weren’t shooting well from 3 or getting open looks) made him think fouling would help us win.

Pitino is the reason we did all we did this year. His recruitment of great talents (T Will, Earl), ability to get maximum effort and output of less natural talents (Andre, Preston, Jerry), ability to handle all the strong personalities and egos of this team (T Will, Edgar) and make everyone buy into the team system which when it was working we were winning Big East regular season championships, Big East tournament championships, and winning Sweet 16 games by 40 points.

One game doesn’t diminish the coaching job Pitino has done this season (should have been Big East COY in my opinion) or the accomplishments of all our players for that matter. Yeah, I wish it would have ended differently, and I am sorry to see it go. And like everyone else, I can look to things that happened during the game with coaching and execution and second guess it, but the fact remains, none of us have the ability to coach that group of players like Pitino did this year. I am glad he is the head coach of my favorite sports team and proud of the job he, and everyone else in that program has done this year. Go Cards!

by Ben Go CARDS on Mar 30, 2009 3:28 PM EDT reply actions

Fact: More than one UL player was not mentally prepared for MSU

I think it’s fair (obvious even?) to say UL was outcoached…but UL’s coaching staff was severely limited by the players’ lack of mental preparation. Everyone on the court played relatively hard but it was obvious MSU played like they wanted it more and that was the difference. They believed they were going to win during all 2400 seconds of the game.

I’m pretty sure Coach P did all things possible to churn a comeback but he knows these guys better than us and he gets paid to make these decisions, if it did in fact go down like that.

If I’m a player in that huddle, I’m still telling Coach to go F himself—i’m not giving up yet. Maybe he was partly using the speech to rile them up.

by UL is my hot hot sex on Mar 31, 2009 1:09 AM EDT reply actions