Rick Pitino Press Conference Notes

by Mike Rutherford on Jan 24, 2012 2:49 PM EST in Basketball

Probably the shortest and least eventful press conference of the season thus far. No complaints here.

--Louisville and Villanova are very similar teams both in style and Big East record right now.

--Chane Behanan's offensive game has improved tremendously, but his defensive game is a different story. He takes a lot of pride in what he does and he's working extremely hard to get better.

--Says Kyle Kuric's ankle is fine even though he looked gimpy at one point during the second half. He'll be 100% for the Villanova game.

--The four guard lineup was +15 in the Pitt game and he's going to go small more towards the end of games. He doesn't want to go to to that lineup exclusively because you can't abandon Chane Behanan, who is the future of the program.

--Was very pleased overall with the performance at Pitt.

--Everybody is bunched up in the league, and with the exception of Syracuse it's going to stay that way.

--Doesn't think the team was ever "in a funk," just thinks it was an injured basketball team. We played poorly against Providence, but we played well in the losses to Georgetown and Notre Dame. We played right with the No. 1 team in the country at their place.

--When we were 12-0 he didn't think this was a great basketball team, and when we lost a couple he didn't think it was an awful team either.

--The last week of practice has been the most consistent of the season because we've finally got guys healthy. Getting Elisha Justice and Kyle Kuric back and healthy has been big for practice.

--Thinks the team could have gone far in the tournament last year if Preston Knowles hadn't gotten hurt. Not to take anything away from Morehead, but we came into that game playing very well.

--Anybody can beat anybody in this league, and every game is going to be right there for the taking for us.

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No mention of Chane's big cake?

by cards84 on Jan 24, 2012 2:56 PM EST reply actions

Pitino is fanning the flames.

Although I assume we can blame it on whatever writer asked him about the tourney loss last year.

by CardinalDude on Jan 24, 2012 3:03 PM EST reply actions

Interesting quote:

“The last week of practice has been the most consistent of the season because we’ve finally got guys healthy. Getting Elisha Justice and Kyle Kuric back and healthy has been big for practice.”

Kuric suffered the high ankle sprain very recenty. Is Rick saying that us missing Bullet has been the problem the rest of the season with practice?

Find that hard to believe, but ok.

Another one:

"Thinks the team could have gone far in the tournament last year if Preston Knowles hadn’t gotten hurt. Not to take anything away from Morehead, but we came into that game playing very well.

Rick stated the exact opposite not long ago. Would take me a while to find the exact link, but he said Preston going down was not the reason we lost because of course “Morehead St. was a terrific team.”

I’m trying really hard to get back to liking Rick and being thankful we have him here, but sh!t like this isn’t helping.

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www.lordkayoss.com

by LORD KAYOSS on Jan 24, 2012 3:07 PM EST reply actions

As I say, pay no attention to anything he says

He plays mind games with every spoken word. And sometimes those thoughts are beyond analysis,

by cbcard on Jan 24, 2012 3:17 PM EST up reply actions

I'll take the first comment back to

RemoteCardinal’s post about the defense, but raise it to the offense as well. Having guys who understand the “system” and can demonstrate it has to make practice smoother and more informative. Other than Blackshear, the rest of the injured players were/are the experienced ones.

by ptichenor1 on Jan 24, 2012 3:18 PM EST up reply actions