Gophers Athletics Director Mark Coyle sits about 10 rows directly behind the home bench during every men’s basketball game at Williams Arena.

Coyle was seated in this prime spot to see the Gophers’ late collapse in Sunday’s loss to Iowa and for their wilting defeat Wednesday against Indiana. From his plastic maroon seat, he watched the Richard Pitino-led program fall off the NCAA tournament bubble and into 12th place in the 14-team Big Ten Conference.

Since his own hire in 2016, Coyle has prided himself on making coaching hires without the help of search firms. He instead consults his own meticulous short lists of candidates for each sport, with previously listed candidates becoming his three most high-profile hires: football coach P.J. Fleck, men’s hockey coach Bob Motzko and women’s basketball coach Lindsay Whalen.

“I’m a nerd; I get it,” Coyle said after hiring Whalen in April 2018. “I’m prepared. I like to be very prepared. … If you came to my house in St. Paul, open up a desk drawer, I’ve got green files of every sport and coaches we want to go after. We constantly update that list because you never know when something is going to happen. If something happens, I believe you’ve got to go quickly.”

During the Gophers men’s basketball team’s down year, has Coyle tweaked the contents in that file folder and set the ground work to make a change from Pitino?

The adage is that newer athletic directors want to hand pick their own coaches, not just keep the one they’ve inherited from predecessors. Coyle’s track record with his three big hires shed light on how he might make a change for men’s basketball. But Coyle and Pitino have been together for four seasons now while weathering highs and lows.

In that span, Pitino has made two NCAA tournament appearances, including last season when his team finished 22-14 and beat Louisville in the opening round — the program’s second official March Madness victory since 1990.

Before a late run last season, Pitino saw his name on coaching hot seat lists and said, “I didn’t want to ask Mark.” He acknowledged that only after their NCAA tournament berth had been locked up.

Weeks later in April, Coyle awarded Pitino a two-year contract extension, which runs four more seasons through 2023-24, and has a annual average pay of $2.4 million.

But if the Gophers fire Pitino, the contract buyout is $2 million before May 1.

This year’s Gophers team is 12-13 overall and 6-9 in the Big Ten. The early departure of underclassman Amir Coffey for the NBA/G-League and season-ending injury to Eric Curry took a major bite out of the top end of the U’s roster, which has incorporated seven newcomers and has few veteran leaders.

The Big Ten is expected to send more than eight teams to the NCAA tournament this season — which would be a conference record — and Minnesota currently has the ignominy of being left out of that large group.

Overall, Pitino’s record at Minnesota is 124-105 overall and and 46-79 in the Big Ten. Unless the Gophers go on a unprecedented winning streak in the final five regular-season games and the Big Ten tournament, the team will miss the NCAAs, leaving Pitino with only two tournament appearances in seven seasons.

When Coyle fired football coach Tracy Claeys shortly after the 2016 season culminated in a Holiday Bowl victory over Washington State, Coyle talked about a need to “shake the tree” amid a crippling sexual misconduct scandal. In 2017-18, the Gophers men’s basketball team endured a regression to 15-17 and the expulsion of center Reggie Lynch after he was found “responsible” for two sexual assaults on campus. Coyle stuck by Pitino then.

Also in the firing of Claeys, Coyle called out the football program’s lagging recruiting rankings and attendance at TCF Bank Stadium. This can be applied to men’s basketball as well.

“Recruiting is the backbone of any program,” Coyle has said repeatedly.

The men’s basketball program has brought in a handful of in-state recruits like Coffey, from Hopkins, and this year’s all-Big Ten candidate, sophomore center Daniel Oturu out of Cretin-Derham Hall, but many more top prospects in the state’s current talent-rich era have left for other schools.

From Coyle’s seat at The Barn, he can’t miss the many empty seats and rows of bleachers in the the upper reaches of the lower level and into the second deck. The Gophers have had good crowds for games against Wisconsin and Iowa, but their opponents’ fans traveling across state borders has contributed to that. Going into this week, Minnesota’s average home attendance is 10,368, ranking 11th in the Big Ten.

Coyle often has said getting fans back is “on us,” and he points to winning as a major factor in doing so. After a slow start, crowds at TCF Bank Stadium reached capacity as Fleck’s team finished 11-2 last fall in his third season.

Older precedent tell a story, as well. Before coming to Minnesota, Coyle cut his teeth under Kentucky AD Mitch Barnhart and proudly references his seven years in Lexington, and the hiring and success of men’s basketball coach John Calipari is a part of that.

When Coyle hired Whalen in spring 2018, he referenced a lunch meeting the previous summer and how that led to him adding Whalen to his list of candidates to replace Marleen Stollings, who left for Texas Tech. Related Articles What’s next for U’s other fall sports? Probably spring schedules

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When Don Lucia stepped down earlier in spring 2018, Coyle said he immediately began talking to men’s hockey alums about a replacement, and Motzko’s often name came up.

But Coyle also has talked about creating “destination jobs” at the U, ones that don’t reset with coaching changes. When Pitino received his contract extension immediately after the Final Four in Minneapolis last year, Coyle referenced an optimistic future with Pitino.

“I am excited for Coach Pitino to continue to lead our men’s basketball program,” Coyle’s statement read. “Coach Pitino has developed All-Big Ten players, led deep runs into the Big Ten tournament and earned the school’s ninth (official) NCAA tournament win this year. I look forward to him advancing the program further in the upcoming years.”