MINNEAPOLIS -- Richard Pitino tweets. He blogs. And the first-year Gophers men's basketball coach also listens to rap music.
It's easy to see why the 31-year-old Pitino needed little time to connect with his roster of players. While the Gophers' previous coach, Tubby Smith, was old enough to be their father, Pitino is old enough to be their big brother -- or maybe even their good friend.
"He's a real cool guy," said senior guard Maverick Ahanmisi. "I wouldn't mind hanging out with him."
When Pitino took the job at Minnesota this past April, he insisted that he would use his age (he was 30 at the time) as an advantage, even though he had just one previous year of head coaching experience. In the early goings of his first year at Dinkytown, that seems to have been the case.
Players appreciate Pitino's honesty, saying he's not one to sugarcoat the negatives in practice or in a game. He brings a certain level of intensity and energy that is needed when dealing with college athletes, especially ones not much younger than him. They recognize the age gap and realize that Pitino was a student at Providence not long ago.
"He's 31, so he's not that much older than us," said junior guard Andre Hollins. "It's good to have a coach that can relate to you."
Part of connecting with his players has to do with Pitino's social media savvy. He tweets under the handle @MNCoachPitino and has more than 20,000 followers -- far more than any of his players. Pitino sees Twitter as somewhat of a necessary evil in 2013, one that has infiltrated its way into not only college athletics but into the Gophers' locker room as well.
"Everybody has a Twitter handle. Everybody does it often. It's probably too much a part of their life. But I don't think you can ignore it," Pitino said at the team's media day last month. "I think you've got to get them to utilize it the right way, because so much about Twitter -- and it's not that I'm anti-Twitter -- but Twitter is an individualistic thing.
"It's not team. It's almost anti-team because it's all about my followers. 'How many followers does this guy have?' They all know how many followers they have. They know how many I have. They know how many Miley Cyrus has. It's ridiculous. I think you've got to teach them how to use it the right way."
Pitino doesn't tweet often -- just 380 total tweets have been generated from his account -- and when he does tweet, it's often a positive message or words of encouragement for fellow Gophers athletic programs. He'll also use Twitter to promote his other social media platform: his blog, which can be found on the Gophers' athletic website. The blog began back on July 9 as Pitino's way of connecting, not so much with his players but with Gophers fans who read his entries. He often offers comments (and criticisms) of his team's practices and rated each player's performance in Minnesota's intrasquad scrimmage earlier this year.
The players insist they don't read the blog -- they already hear what Pitino has to say in practice -- and Pitino admits he tries to play with his players' minds a bit in his posts. But they're not the ones Pitino is writing for.
"I do it for the fans, to be honest with you," Pitino said. "I think it's a great way to connect with them. I think I'm a young head coach. I think I'm an unproven head coach who nobody really knows, and I think this is a good way to kind of speed up that process, especially with connecting with the fans as much as possible because the one thing I love about this place more than anything is we have a fan base who really, really cares."
Pitino also has a team filled with players who really care. Even though it meant extra conditioning work in the offseason, the Gophers have seemingly embraced Pitino's uptempo style of play. They appreciate their new coach's honesty, using it to better themselves. Pitino picks and chooses the times he'll get after a player or when he'll praise someone for doing something well.
The Gophers also say Pitino has a sense of humor and even shares similar tastes in music. Before a recent practice, Pitino had rap music playing over the speakers as Minnesota warmed up, something that wouldn't have happened with the old regime.
"He'll be playing some crazy stuff sometimes," said redshirt freshman Charles Buggs. "Sometimes I think we need to turn it off, but it's all right."
All in all, Pitino's ability to connect with his players has helped make the transition an easy one from Florida International to Minnesota so far. The Gophers breezed through their two exhibition games and beat Lehigh handily in last Friday's season opener.
The Gophers now prepare to host Montana on Tuesday night at Williams Arena. As they do so, they'll be led by a coach who not that long ago was studying for his own college exams.
"I'm one of the youngest head coaches out there. I think I have to use that to my advantage. I don't think I have to run from it," Pitino said. "Everybody kind of compares me to my dad. It's very simple: he's 61 years old, I'm 31 years old. I don't want to act 61. I want to act 21."
Follow Tyler Mason on Twitter
