Pitino pregame and postgame comments

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

I listened to the pregame and postgame comments of Pitino on WEEI.

Before the game, he said that the specific mistake he felt that he
made was that he didn't coach with the same urgency that he did in
his first year on the job. The reason was that he wanted to let the
players gel and not overwhelm them due to the shortened training 
camp, etc. But he regretted that. He also mentioned something about
how the coaches grade each game in various categories, such as
boxing out, rotations, etc. and that the team was grading the lowest
out of any team he's coached, including last year's Celtics. So I am 
sure he is aware of his teams' deficiencies in this area. But he 
doesn't have the practice time to correct it. 

I read that even practice freak Pat Riley only spends an hour a day
on practice nowadays so there really is a limit to what can be done
this season.

After the game, he tried to not be overly critical of the players'
perfomance. He said that he felt that Walker only took one bad shot
during the game. He did say that they needed to work with Paul 
Pierce's offensive game, because he only had two moves, a three
point shot and a drive to the baseline, and opponents were well 
aware of this.

Alex