Tubby Smith’s four-year Big Ten regular season coaching record is 32-40 following yesterday’s 66-63 loss to Penn State at Williams Arena.
After 8-10 and consecutive 9-9 records at Minnesota, Smith produced a 6-12 mark this season. The totals don’t include Big Ten Tournament games where Smith is 5-3.
The Gophers, who begin play in the tournament on Thursday afternoon against Northwestern in Indianapolis, finished in ninth place in the conference standings. Minnesota was a top 25 ranked team until the Gophers ran out of point guards in January and then lost nine of its last 10 games.
Without Devoe Joseph who transferred to Oregon and Al Nolen who broke his right foot, the Gophers often stumbled in the closing minutes of games and lost. The late season collapse left coaches, players and fans frustrated.
Assistant coach Saul Smith told Sports Headliners a couple years ago that the coaching staff came to Minnesota to compete for Big Ten titles. So far the Gophers haven’t been able to go beyond .500 results.
When asked about the program competing for Big Ten championships in July of 2008, Saul Smith talked about NCAA titles, too. “We feel like that’s our goal is to compete nationally and win national titles and to compete (for) Big Ten titles. We’re going to be all right. …”
Saul’s dad won a national championship at Kentucky in 1998 and for six out of his first eight seasons there never lost more than four regular season Southeastern Conference games. During Smith’s last two seasons at Kentucky, prior to taking the Gophers job, his record was 18-14 in SEC games.
Handicapped as they were at point guard, this year’s Gophers should not have stumbled so badly; they had the talent to produce a better record in the Big Ten than 6-12. In December the team inspired hopes of not only playing in the NCAA tournament, but also winning a couple of games. Instead this season has stirred doubts about the program, perhaps even in Smith himself.
Does Smith believe he can win here and does he want to continue at Minnesota? Months ago he was offered a contract extension but he still has not accepted it. If he was holding back from signing in hopes of leveraging support for a new practice facility that task seems more difficult now. Such a disappointing season could easily take the glow off a sales pitch to a lead donor for the facility that will likely cost at least $15 million.
Past winters have included rumors that other schools were courting Smith. This one continues the trend that Smith will go some place else and there’s been speculation it could be Georgia Tech.