Rick Pitino officially introduced Kareem Richardson as his newest assistant coach during a press conference on Monday afternoon. He also discussed Luke Hancock's shoulder injury, Terry Rozier's eligibility and more during the media session.
The highlights:
-Pitino actually almost hired Kareem a year ago. He's a tremendous x's and o's guy and an incredibly hard-worker on the recruiting trail. He and Kevin Keatts will do the bulk of the scouting.
--The job came down to Richardson and former Card Wiley Brown.
--When he was looking at Kareem a few years ago, he called the graduating seniors at Drake to ask about him. They couldn't have had higher praise for Kareem, and that impressed Pitino more than anything.
--Doug Davenport, the son of Scott, has been hired as the new video coordinator. He had taken a job at Winthrop when Pitino called to offer him this position. He had to turn his moving truck around.
--Luke Hancock's shoulder injury will require surgery. He probably could have gone without it, but since it's his shooting shoulder, they're going to go ahead and have it corrected. He will be 100% by the time school starts in mid-August.
--Gorgui Dieng suffered a concussion at some point during the Kentucky game in the Final Four. No one knew until after the game was over. He was just recently cleared to start playing again.
--Again talks about how much better Zach Price and Angel Nunez are going to be. The biggest thing for Zach is still that he needs to dramatically improve his free-throw shooting.
--Terry Rozier has some work to do in summer school to get himself eligible. His status won't be known for sure until the end of the summer. Pitino says he's not especially worried about it.
--He's been extremely upset with the Courier-Journal for a long time now and hasn't read the newspaper at all in years. It's only because he likes C.L. Brown, Eric Crawford and Rick Bozich so much that he even talks to them.
--This staff is really going to miss Richard a lot. The teams' accomplishments with him on staff speaks for itself.