Rick Pitino was very disappointed after Louisville was bounced from the ACC Tournament on Thursday at the hands of a 70-60 loss to North Carolina, so he decided to take it out on a student reporter.
Before opening things up for questions, Pitino said in his opening remarks that the Cardinals “went cold” when North Carolina switched to zone defense. When student reporter Derek Brightwell of the Louisville Cardinal asked Pitino why his team is struggling so much against the zone, salty Rick went off on him.
“Well, you obviously see, if you’re from the Louisville Cardinal, that we’re not a great shooting team so that’s a pretty silly question to ask,” Pitino barked. “You watched the game, didn’t you? So you don’t have to be an X and O genius to figure that one out, do you?”
Brightwell was a good sport about it after the press conference.
Got thrashed by Pitino at the presser, but the @CardChronicle comment section was talking about me. Also picked up 4 followers. #illtakeit
— Derek Brightwell (@derekbrightwell) March 12, 2015
What was so unreasonable about that question? Even if Louisville is struggling against the zone because they are a poor shooting team, how does Pitino plan to fix it? You don’t just head into the NCAA Tournament accepting that your team is ineffective against the zone and leave it at that. Perhaps Brightwell could have asked Pitino what adjustments he plans to make to prevent that, but Pitino knew exactly what he meant.
Pitino can be entertaining during postgame press conferences when he drops gems like this, but that was uncalled for.
H/T The Big Lead
