Richard Pitino and his Gophers basketball team won't be tweeting anytime soon.
Pitino's account no longer is active. And so are most of his players going into Thursday's exhibition game against Bemidji State. They won't be using Twitter until after the season, junior center Reggie Lynch tweeted before the post and his page were gone.
This isn't the first time the Gophers basketball team went on a Twitter ban. Pitino enforced one after a 2-7 start to the Big Ten Conference season in 2015-16. He thought players were spending too much time worrying about what their critics were saying.
"I don't know if all of a sudden now it's going to change the season," Pitino said in January 2015. "It's just a little thing, just to get them to not have the weight of the world on their shoulders, because they don't deserve that."
The Gophers are coming off an 8-23 season, where off-court issues included an explicit video posted on former player Kevin Dorsey's Twitter account in February. The team was allowed to use Twitter last season, so this could be one way to avoid any more social media distractions.
Eleven of the 16 players on this season's roster had Twitter accounts, but they are no longer being used. Pitino and his players still use Facebook and Instagram.
