From Rick Pitino's 3/6/15 presser:

I'm sure you saw Kevin Keatts won CAA Coach of the Year

That's great, I hadn't seen that.

Were you surprised?

Not after playing him. But he was picked - after speaking with him in summer time, he just kept saying, "what do you do? We're picked dead last, we have nobody who can score the basketball." I didn't know if he was setting me up for playing us, but then I looked at his stats and the fact that he was picked dead last, and now he's in a four-way tie for first.

But Keatts is a unique individual. Not only is he a very good coach, not only is he a very good recruiter and evaluator, but he's a positive individual. And he's got a -- we talked about him taking that job, and I said do you feel you can recruit? I think every job is a great job. I felt that way about Boston University, even though they hadn't had a winning season in 15 years, I felt that they could recruit as well as anybody at the top of their conference. I told Kevin the same thing. In your conference, you can recruit as well as anybody at the top, and that's what makes a great job. What makes a bad job is if you can't recruit to the teams at the top. So he's done a great job, and he's got four guys sitting out right now that are four starters into next season. So he's got a real good future.

Will he be on the schedule next year?

He's coming in for the Minardi Classic. The Minardi Classic is a tournament next year. It's a 4-team event, so he's coming in.

(03-07-2015 08:36 AM)70shawk Wrote:  From Rick Pitino's 3/6/15 presser:

I'm sure you saw Kevin Keatts won CAA Coach of the Year

That's great, I hadn't seen that.

Were you surprised?

Not after playing him. But he was picked - after speaking with him in summer time, he just kept saying, "what do you do? We're picked dead last, we have nobody who can score the basketball." I didn't know if he was setting me up for playing us, but then I looked at his stats and the fact that he was picked dead last, and now he's in a four-way tie for first.

But Keatts is a unique individual. Not only is he a very good coach, not only is he a very good recruiter and evaluator, but he's a positive individual. And he's got a -- we talked about him taking that job, and I said do you feel you can recruit? I think every job is a great job. I felt that way about Boston University, even though they hadn't had a winning season in 15 years, I felt that they could recruit as well as anybody at the top of their conference. I told Kevin the same thing. In your conference, you can recruit as well as anybody at the top, and that's what makes a great job. What makes a bad job is if you can't recruit to the teams at the top. So he's done a great job, and he's got four guys sitting out right now that are four starters into next season. So he's got a real good future.

Will he be on the schedule next year?

He's coming in for the Minardi Classic. The Minardi Classic is a tournament next year. It's a 4-team event, so he's coming in.

Nice positive comments about Keatts. I have felt all along the missing ingredient in our team this year is the lack of a pure shooter, it appears Keatts obviously saw the problem coming in. One hope today is we aren't one minute into the game and Freddie, Spruill, or Williams pick up a quick foul. We need to keep our starters on the floor.