As the old saying goes, “it’s not what you know, but who you know.”

When it comes to Richard Pitino and the all-important recruiting realm, that familiar adage appears to be paying it’s dividends.

In completely opposite fashion of the friends in low places having Garth Brooks, the Gophers men’s basketball coach has himself some family in elevated locations.

Despite spending the last few year’s surrounded by controversy, Pitino’s father, Rick, had more than his fair share of positive coaching accomplishments. The most impressive of which occurred during the mid-1990s.

Over the five season span from 1993-1997, Papa Pitino’s Kentucky Wildcats made not one, not two, but three Final Four appearances.

The team that kicked off the hat trick’s worth of NCAA Tournament runs was lead by future NBA All-Star Jamal Mashburn.

Fast forwarding a quarter-century to 2018, Mashburn’s son, Jamal Jr. is a high school junior who spends his free time torching other teenagers on the basketball court.

Per Wednesday’s reports, the 2020 recruit will soon be taking a breather from his busting opponents in order to check out an educational institution you’re probably familiar with:

Full circle, baby! F*ck learning stuff. It’s all about who you know.

Upon initially seeing these reports, without even knowing a damn thing about Jamal Mashburn Jr.’s game, the fact that the artist commonly known as Monster Mash’s son was visiting the Maroon and Gold this Friday (10/5/18) had me seventh grade school girl kind of giddy.

If you’re reading this thinking that my uneducated excitement was foolish, your absolutely right. What can I say? NBA related nostalgia is known to throw logic out the window.

With that being said, luckily for me and my premature emotions, Jamal Jr. is a four-star stud.

To help put his current composite score of 0.9439 into perspective, current Minnesota freshman Daniel Oturu and Jarvis Omersa saw their scores on the custom scale close at 0.9819 and 0.8975, respectively.

While Richard Pitino and Gopher fans will keep their fingers crossed that Mashburn Jr.’s visit is eventually parlayed into a commitment, a close eye needs to be kept on the Kentucky-based college where Papa Pitino most recently coached.

That’s right. As of right now, per 247 Sports, Louisville is seen as the leading contender to land the coveted guard’s services.

I don’t know about you, but something seems to tell me that a solid sales pitch or two could potentially sway the son of the Wildcat legend away from their rival Cardinals.

Anywho, in closing, it feel somewhat necessary to give a shoutout to any and all NBA fiends who happened to stumble across this article.

To thank you for your time, please take these Mr. Mashburn highlights as a poor man’s parting gift:

@Mostly_Always

www.mostlyalways.com