Culture Building in the Big 10

(St. Louis, MO) – Building your basketball program the right way has its challenges when you live in a ‘money conference’ like the Big 10. You might be Maryland Head Coach Mark Turgeon whose program has changed leagues and time zones, or you might be Matt Painter (Purdue) who found himself with a team that didn’t reflect his values, or you could be Minnesota’s Richard Pitino who is trying to succeed outside the long shadow cast all the way from Louisville.

Every program has its challenges but in, what some call the best conference in college basketball, the pressure and obstacles can be huge.

Think of Maryland. The Terrapins have just left Tobacco Road, the ACC and all that history and tradition of Dean Smith, Lefty Driesell and neighborhood road trips for travels to Lincoln, Nebraska, and 13 other teams they don’t know much about. Needless to say there won’t be many Turtle fans in those hostile frozen venues in Michigan, Wisconsin and Illinois.

Add to that Turgeon has lost five transfers, two assistants and is in a bit of heat with Maryland fans because they haven’t been to the NCAA tournament since 2010.

Turgeon says the adjustments won’t be impossible, but they will be challenging. He told me his team will be going through an education during this season’s Big 10 schedule.

 

The ever-changing landscape of college basketball moves programs and players in what seems to be a frantic pace. The former Wichita State head coach says that’s just the way it’s going to be.

 

Purdue’s Matt Painter had highly ranked teams with superior talent just a couple of seasons ago. That led to more talented players arriving, but some of those players were following headlines and didn’t fit Painter’s vision for Boilermaker basketball and have since left and the 10th year coach is reformatting his team into the image he’s looking for and comfortable with.

I asked the former Southern Illinois head coach if these changes reflected his growth as a coach and he told me building a program is a process that is his responsibility to build and learning how to read the recruits more accurately is a key ingredient.

 

Painter says the struggle college basketball is facing is cultural. Young players are very willing to give up on the process too early and it makes building a program difficult.

 

Richard Pitino loved his first year with the Gophers and had some solid success, but is looking for more. His surname can only take him so far.  Minnesota is in for some real growth this season as the Pitino brand gets more and more engrained.

The grind of recruiting isn’t something Pitino minds, but knows that getting more and more talented players to play in Williams Arena is key and at the same time building around quality people like Joey King gives the program the stability and credibility that long term success requires.

 

Make no mistake the pressure to win in every college basketball program is big, but for the 14 teams of the Big 10 it is weighty and winning games in this league is not easy.

The son of a legend and and two former Missouri Valley Conference coaches have had success on the largest of stages and are all going through their own growing pains.

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