Five BIG Questions with: Rick Pitino
By: Brian Yates
Issue date: 4/19/06 Section: News
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Louisville Patriot: The past few years, and last year in particular, have been injury-plagued. Is there anything you do differently with regard to conditioning to try to keep that from happening again or is it just one of those fluke things that you can't do anything about?
Coach Rick Pitino: The injuries had nothing to do with what we do. Tejo Palacios hurt himself in a pickup game; David Padgett has had knee problems since high school and Chad Millard had back problems in high school. Andre McGee had back problems in high school, so it's nothing to do with conditioning or anything we could do to help prevent it.
LP: Who do you envision stepping up as a leader for next year's team?
Pitino: If there's one area I was disappointed in last year - and it had nothing to do with Taquan - we had very poor leadership on our basketball team. We had a bunch of nice guys; really great guys, but nobody who was going to step up like Ellis Myles or Francisco Garcia and just get after somebody. Nobody was going to do that and we lacked what it takes to be a leader and hopefully this year whoever is captain will step up and be a leader.
I'm hoping that a guy like T-Will can become a little like Antoine Walker; Antoine Walker went from a brash young man who was very immature to a much more sophisticated young man who was totally focused on winning a championship. I'm hoping T-Will can do that a little because Antoine was a very good leader as a sophomore and a very immature person as a freshman.
So I don't know who it's going to be, but I'm hoping it's a whole team. Anytime you have eight new players everybody is looking around and waiting for somebody else to lead and Taquan…that's just not his role. He's a very quiet guy.
LP: When you think of Florida, how difficult will it be for them to repeat as national champions?
Pitino: It's tough, but I think it's very possible. You look at next year and without question, North Carolina has a great team back, and a great class coming in. Pittsburgh obviously has a great team coming back and Florida has an awesome team back; UCLA has their players back, so you can generally look at whose coming back, but remember, there's so much room for growth with those Florida players.
Just look at what Green and Noah did in one year. Now watch them take it to another level because physically they're all going to get bigger and better. So Florida has a great shot at it, but it's not easy to do.
LP: You came as close as a team possibly can to winning back-to-back in 1995-96 and 1996-97 with Kentucky. How much pressure is on a team during the second go-around?
Pitino: We didn't expect it the second year because we lost everybody. We lost four starters; it surprised us.
I just spoke to Nazr [Mohammed] for the first time last week since missing those free throws [laughter] in ten years. It is very difficult, but we didn't expect it and I think that's why it was a little easier on us. Nobody really expected us to do it again and it even surprised us a little bit, but Mercer got a lot better and Padgett got a lot better and the team really started to improve and we were still very young. Obviously, the following year they won the championship again.
Florida's a lot different from that team though.
LP: Next year's team.
Pitino: I can give you one guarantee: this team will be a much better basketball team than last year's team. I can say that hands down from being in this business 32 years; we're going to be much better than we were last year just because there's eight new players that now have experience and Palacios will be healthy.
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Anonymous
posted 4/23/06 @ 12:55 PM EST
Wow, How'd the Patriot get the scoop on this one with the Cardinal trying and trying to get a sit-down interview with Pitino and no dice.
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