Reusse: Pitino era recalls the '70s and The Muzz

Richard Pitino walked into the club room at Williams Arena a couple of minutes before noon Monday. He was there to record his weekly, hourlong radio show. The audience numbered around 15, with a few members of the Golden Dunkers booster club and other guests.

I'm guessing this is not the atmosphere that Pitino's father experiences when "The Rick Pitino Show" takes place live most weeks during the season at the Tumbleweed Tex Mex Grill & Margarita Bar in Louisville, Ky.

Richard Pitino was introduced as the Gophers men's basketball coach on April 5, 2013, at the age of 30 years and 6 ½ months. That made him a month younger than Bill Musselman, the previous youngest Gophers basketball coach, when he was hired on April 5, 1971.

There are considerable differences in the situations faced and the styles delivered by these young coaches on arrival in Minneapolis.

Musselman walked into an era of complete apathy for Gophers basketball. After only four nonconference games (North Dakota, Butler, Drake, Loyola) on the home schedule, The Muzz had the Barn jammed with over 19,000 fans for the Big Ten opener vs. Indiana on Jan. 8, 1972.

Musselman did this with his Globetrotters-style pregame show, but also with no-holds-barred recruiting and by convincing Minnesota's sporting public that a power game built on fierce defense was enthralling to watch.

Unfortunately for Musselman, and what could have been a legacy as the most important figure in the history of Gophers basketball, the brawl with Ohio State on Jan. 25, 1972, turned him into an ogre nationally. It also created the impetus for NCAA investigators to eventually look into what was under those rocks on which Minnesota's basketball revival was built.

One wild night of Barn-bursting didn't change the fact that the fan base was disillusioned with what had become annual February fade-outs in the Big Ten.

More important, athletic director Norwood Teague and his basketball man, Mike Ellis, perceived it to be a tired program with a tired coach.

Tubby won his only NCAA game with the Gophers in late March, beating UCLA, but Teague later admitted that even a second victory — an upset of Florida — and a visit to the Sweet Sixteen wouldn't have saved the Tubster.

Pitino's immediate sales pitch was a style of play that was the anti-Musselman: trap on defense, run on offense, lots of possessions, fire away on threes.

The Muzz didn't have threes, of course, but he wouldn't have liked 'em anyway.

My guess is that Richard Pitino would've done the same, then or now. He's going to take an athlete where he can get one, and if he doesn't work out — next!

Wally Ellenson left last February and the Gophers were grateful to retrieve the scholarship, since kid brother Henry wasn't coming to Minnesota, anyway. Now, transfer Zach Lofton and freshman Josh Martin have come and gone in a blink, and Daquein McNeil — a player with an iffy background — was charged with domestic assault and is not with the team.

We used to fret a lot when Tubby would lose a player, but today, Gophers fans seem much happier that the mysterious Gaston Diedhiou has been deemed eligible than worried as to why a big recruit, Martin, didn't make it to the end of his first semester.

We don't care because we like Pitino's fresh face and ideas, we see a Big Ten that's more vulnerable than imagined, and we anticipate an entertaining winter in the Barn now that the cupcakes have been devoured and the real games are here.

One warning: No matter the emotions you see up there, fans, don't jump on the elevated floor and start chasing Buckeyes around, because that can cause all sorts of headaches for a young coach.