Around the Big East 19/20

[quote="SJUFAN2" post=391214]I may be in the minority on this but I think our shortcomings as a program the past 30 years or so are of our own making. I have a hard time blaming Uconn's presence for our issues.

Mahoney never should have been hired to replace Coach Carnesecca...
Fraschilla was a good hire but probably didn't want to be here long term...
Hiring Jarvis out of left field instead of Jay Wright...
Norm Roberts was in over his head but did clean things up...
Lavin might have worked out if he'd not gotten sick...
Chris Mullin was just a bad hire...

With the benefit of hindsight, it just looks like we never had clear vision for the program at the top levels. Maybe it was money (facilities), or school politics, or apathy, or ...whatever.

It just feels different now. Cragg seems to be outside of all the internal politics and has an understanding of what it takes to be a top flight program. Anderson is exactly the right personality, coaching style, and bue collar/nose to the grindstone type of HC we have been looking for and failing to hire these past several decades.

As for Uconn...I'm glad they are back. Every conference needs a villain and they own that role in perpetuity.[/quote]
I agree that most of our failings have been self inflicted. I don’t get too crazy about the Mahoney hiring. In fairness, he probably deserved a shot and did bring in that top class. Just didn’t pan out. We made a mistake, moved on, got a good one in Fraschilla...thought we were set....and from that point forward repeatedly shot ourselves in the foot ...Jarvis...good coach...but they knew he wasn’t a HS/AAU recruiter when they hired him (GW routinely had a roster of foreign imports)...the Norm hire (and especially the extension) really set us back...Lavin could have done some really good things here but veered off course and Mullin just didn’t seem to be all in on the life of a college coach. So, yes, we made a number of ill advised hires...hung on too long on some...and didn’t hold other accountable.

That said, there is no reason we cant get ourselves back into the upper half of the conference where we once were and belong.

Personally, I think we have the right guy and, while I agree that he will have to start reeling in some top recruits, the damage that you referenced is real
 
[quote="Jack Williams" post=391225][quote="Adam" post=391222]Jack- obviously our classes under Lavin and Mullin didn't live up to their potential. That's why they were fired. I am glad CMA is our coach, but that doesn't mean I can't be concerned if I see a potential flaw.

Look at rankings for the rest of the Big East or the league in general and there's a clear correlation between rankings and how a team performs. That's just a fact, not an opinion. Now, are there outliers? Absolutely. St. John's was one of them. Maybe now we'll be an outlier the other way where we turn a bunch of 3 stars into 4 star players. That's possible, I just don't think it's sustainable long-term. I completely agree we need coaching first and foremost. Where I disagree is that we don't need 4 stars.

It's important to note that this staff HAS sent out a lot of offers to 4/5 stars. You honestly think the staff wouldn't love to have some of them? Are we just intentionally missing?

Also, your post keeps downplaying 247 as if it is some niche site, but I hope you realize these are the composite rankings. Meaning, they are an aggregate of all the rankings available online (ESPN, Rivals, etc). There's a reason I've used them for the past decade.

I'll all for discussing this stuff, I enjoy it. I just ask that you be respectful.[/quote]

I don’t think I ever was disrespectful. My comment originally was about people taking these recruiting sites too seriously and I think it’s true.

As for rankings on 247 directly correlating to success being a FACT? I disagree.

Since they’ve joined the big East, according to 247, Butler has consistently been in the bottom 3 of the league pretty much every year in terms of recruiting class.

Meanwhile Georgetown, St. John’s and Marquette have gotten a good amount of highly ranked guys. None of those 3 schools have won a tournament game in years.

Marquette had a slew of 4 star prospects when they broke through into the tournament 2 years ago only to get bitch slapped by a guy that somehow high school scouts didn’t think was great.

And yes, of course the staff wants 4 and 5 star guys. That’s fine. I’m just saying, it’s pretty shortsighted for St. John’s fans of all people to think getting some 4 stars makes or breaks us. We’ve seen it before. What’s wrong with us having a coach try a different route.

I’m 22. The only coaches I’ve seen in my lifetime before mike A are Norm, Lavin and Mullin. Not much “coaching” going on. So for me, I’m done with getting excited over good recruiting classes only to get let down. I like our coach now who knows what style he wants to play, recruits to it, and then plays. If he sprinkles in a 4 or 5 star recruit that’s fine but I’m not gonna lose sleep over where we sit on a 247 type site. It’s just not worth it to me. Because I’ve seen us at the top of those sites over the years. Didn’t equate to wins. I’ve seen Marquette and Georgetown at the top of those sites.[/quote]

On average the rankings do correlate even if there are a lot of outliers. Let's take an extreme: look at how blue bloods like Nova recruit vs their success and compare that to a team like Fordham. Or even how the Big East recruits vs the American and how that correlates with our success on the court. Certainly not a 100% correlation and individual teams can deviate a LOT, but overall if you look at the picture as a whole there is a strong correlation. That's why I believe long-term we can't be very successful without 4 stars, unless our recruiters are REALLY good at their jobs. The rest of the Big East has rosters mostly made up of 4 star talent. We finished the year strong, but we still finished in the basement.

You're citing specific outliers and I acknowledge there are many. We can play this game all day. Just look at how Butler, Xavier, and Creighton are now recruiting 4 stars these past few years. Big East recruiting as a whole has elevated, especially for the newcomers, and that has caused teams like Creighton/Xavier/Butler to reach the Top 25 at points this year.

I'm 30 and I'm not happy with how we performed under Lavin and Mullin. Trust me, I got very frustrated that our talent level or pre-season rankings were never met. I just don't think we can go the other extreme of thinking the rankings aren't important.

We can just agree to disagree on the importance of 4 stars. I actually think we can have a few solid years on 3 stars alone (incoming this upcoming one), but I'd like to see that we are capable at least of obtaining 4 star talent. College basketball is sleazy and CMA is a very respectful guy, but I do wonder if we're being too careful and may return to the Norm years. Those years were far worse than the Lavin and Mullin years.

I don't pay attention to the rankings once the season starts (mostly W/Ls), but in June there's not much else to discuss. I'm not losing any sleep over these rankings, just would like to see some progress with top recruits. Not much else to discuss or get excited about during the off-season.
 
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I’m not really concerned with pitting nova and Fordham against each other.

The whole reason I got into this discussion was because of the comment that we are being outclassed by the rest of the conference.

So just looking at this from a big East perspective, St. John’s, Marquette, and Georgetown according to 247 have gotten a lot of higher rated guys over the last couple years compared to schools like Butler, X, Hall.

I’m just saying, we don’t have to be at the top of 247 big east rankings to win in the big East. That’s my point.

I just take issue with that because by that logic we’ve “outclassed” other schools like butler before in the rankings and it ended up not mattering

We actually had a chance to make it to the semifinals of the BET for once this past year and our best ranked guy wasn’t even playing.
 
[quote="SJUFAN2" post=391214]I may be in the minority on this but I think our shortcomings as a program the past 30 years or so are of our own making. I have a hard time blaming Uconn's presence for our issues.

Mahoney never should have been hired to replace Coach Carnesecca...
Fraschilla was a good hire but probably didn't want to be here long term...
Hiring Jarvis out of left field instead of Jay Wright...
Norm Roberts was in over his head but did clean things up...
Lavin might have worked out if he'd not gotten sick...
Chris Mullin was just a bad hire...

With the benefit of hindsight, it just looks like we never had clear vision for the program at the top levels. Maybe it was money (facilities), or school politics, or apathy, or ...whatever.

It just feels different now. Cragg seems to be outside of all the internal politics and has an understanding of what it takes to be a top flight program. Anderson is exactly the right personality, coaching style, and bue collar/nose to the grindstone type of HC we have been looking for and failing to hire these past several decades.

As for Uconn...I'm glad they are back. Every conference needs a villain and they own that role in perpetuity.[/quote]

Revisionist history re: Jay Wright, and 1998. His record at Hofstra at the time, was 50-63. I'd have killed our administration at the time, if they would have brought him on.

I think you are confusing the Wright thing with the year 2000, when we all thought Jarvis was leaving for the Washington Wizards. At that point, Jay Wright was going to get the first phone call, which made sense, since he had gone 46-17 the previous two years (although, I personally would have had skepticism about how Wright would have done in a post-Claxton world - again, that's how I felt at the time. Obviously, he would have done great). Considering that we went 53-17 in Jarvis's first two years, I don't think most of us were upset at that turn of events, at the time (I didn't really start souring on him until year 5).

I know we all had this great fantasy of Jay Wright being our coach, but it was never going to happen, mostly due to timing issues. To say anything else is 20/20 hindsight.
 
My two cents on the recruiting issue is that both Posh and Cole are 4 star level talent, Posh was underrated because of injury year and Cole because top JUCOs are routinely underrated by the recruiting sites. I see these two guys as somewhere between tops 75 and 125 level players which would probably lift our class ranking to somewhere closer to 50 than 77.

Hopefully we'll see how it plays out on the court this year if the country can get this virus under control.
 
[quote="Jack Williams" post=391229]I’m not really concerned with pitting nova and Fordham against each other.

The whole reason I got into this discussion was because of the comment that we are being outclassed by the rest of the conference.

So just looking at this from a big East perspective, St. John’s, Marquette, and Georgetown according to 247 have gotten a lot of higher rated guys over the last couple years compared to schools like Butler, X, Hall.

I’m just saying, we don’t have to be at the top of 247 big east rankings to win in the big East. That’s my point.

I just take issue with that because by that logic we’ve “outclassed” other schools like butler before in the rankings and it ended up not mattering

We actually had a chance to make it to the semifinals of the BET for once this past year and our best ranked guy wasn’t even playing.[/quote]

I actually disagree, I don't think we can win the Big East without 4/5 stars. I realize we're all optimistic because we won 1.5 games in the Tournament this year and were playing well end of the season, but keep in mind Georgetown was ranked #8. We were also down 10 points or whatever to them with a few minutes to go before finishing 23-0. Again, I am optimistic for next year, just cautiously so. The 18 regular season Big East games are a much larger sample size.

You mentioned our best player was out, well what about Georgetown's entire team being out? They lost more players this past year than any other team in college basketball.

You mentioned Georgetown and Marquette recruiting significantly better than Xavier, Seton Hall, and Butler, but 1. Georgetown lost nearly their entire team which is why they tanked and 2. Marquette was a lock for the Tournament while Xavier finished on the bubble (IMO the wrong side of the bubble). Butler also was sliding hard. Seton Hall has recruited well during the past 7 years even if they haven't had many monster classes since Whitehead. Powell has helped carry them and is an example of a player who outperformed his ranking, but he was still a top 80ish recruit. Not really seeing your point.

Something interesting would be taking the average ranking of Big East schools and the average finish of Big East schools over the past 8/9 years (start of the Big East- it takes a couple years for the recruits to have an impact). We would be an outlier (along with Georgetown), but for the most part I'm very confident the rankings would mostly correlate. That's even more true the larger the sample size (such as Big East vs AAC or ACC vs A10).
 
[quote="NCJohnnie" post=391231]My two cents on the recruiting issue is that both Posh and Cole are 4 star level talent, Posh was underrated because of injury year and Cole because top JUCOs are routinely underrated by the recruiting sites. I see these two guys as somewhere between tops 75 and 125 level players which would probably lift our class ranking to somewhere closer to 50 than 77.

Hopefully we'll see how it plays out on the court this year if the country can get this virus under control.[/quote]

This is certainly possible and I mentioned in my post about both players being underrated, but I do wonder if we're buying into our own hype. Fans across all sports have a history of overrating prospects or recruits. We're biased so it's tough to take our word at face value when people who do this for a living disagree with our assessment. Regardless, I definitely hope they're wrong. :)
 
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Agree completely. Mahoney long time assistant. I understood the hire at the time
Jarvis n Norm - the extension hurt

Love Anderson! A professional coach
 
I know we all had this great fantasy of Jay Wright being our coach, but it was never going to happen, mostly due to timing issues. To say anything else is 20/20 hindsight.[/quote]

This. Jarvis hit the ground running both on the court and in recruiting. No one was upset at that hire when made. A coach that had been successful his whole life and brought on some guys who knew the NY landscape, which was both different and booming back then. Not only did he win with Fran's kids but he landed a littany of top 100 kids off-the-bat, including several McD AA's. And even if Darius Miles was never going to make it here, the fact that he verbally popped for St. John's and that our name was known nationally for getting a commit of that kind was a great thing. Ditto for Lenny Cooke.

The ginormous "what if" is if he had taken the Wizards job and we landed Jay, who would have ran from Hofstra to Queens at the time to take it.
 
[quote="Phil G" post=391234]Agree completely. Mahoney long time assistant. I understood the hire at the time
Jarvis n Norm - the extension hurt

Love Anderson! A professional coach[/quote]
Except Mahoney was not just a long time assistant, he had a track record as a D1 head coach at Manhattan where he went something like 16-62. Not a good hire.
 
[quote="Rob" post=391236]I know we all had this great fantasy of Jay Wright being our coach, but it was never going to happen, mostly due to timing issues. To say anything else is 20/20 hindsight.[/quote]

This. Jarvis hit the ground running both on the court and in recruiting. No one was upset at that hire when made. A coach that had been successful his whole life and brought on some guys who knew the NY landscape, which was both different and booming back then. Not only did he win with Fran's kids but he landed a littany of top 100 kids off-the-bat, including several McD AA's. And even if Darius Miles was never going to make it here, the fact that he verbally popped for St. John's and that our name was known nationally for getting a commit of that kind was a great thing. Ditto for Lenny Cooke.

The ginormous "what if" is if he had taken the Wizards job and we landed Jay, who would have ran from Hofstra to Queens at the time to take it.[/quote]

There were serious questions about Jarvis from day one , his recruiting. Second major red flag was the key position given to his son.
He won very well with Mahoney and Frans kids for 2 years but at that time had already opened his mouth with the NCAA. He quickly upset local coaches with his brutal treatment of Eric King then we won’t even discuss Frazier and Russell Robinso , pure disgraceful.
Everyone knew Miles had no chance of being academically eligible and after loosing out on André Barrett and Taliek Brown ( who grew up new door at St. John’s Prep ) he lucked in to Cook after Carolina gave ships to 2 guards who did not pan out.
Jarvis was on a one way trajectory after winning with other coaches players.
 
[quote="Phil G" post=391243]I hear ya with Mahoney
I understood- not good hire I’m sure Louie had input[/quote]

I really feel bad that Brian's stint as our coach was not successful
I went to grad school with him at St John's in the 1970's
He is a really nice guy and deserved a much better fate
 
[quote="Phil G" post=391243]I hear ya with Mahoney
I understood- not good hire I’m sure Louie had input[/quote]

There way no way in hell that Mahoney wasn’t getting the job after Louie retired.
 
A summary on the Post Louie Carnesecca Coaches:

Brian Mahoney: Actually Mahoney started out great. He had a really terrific first year, The team went 12-6 in conference and was led by Senior Guard David Cain who seemingly came from out of nowhere. The team was a number five seed in the tournament, winning a first round game easily before losing a close game to #4 seed Arkansas who was knocked out in the next round by eventual Champ North Carolina by only six points.

After that, he took that success and recruited well bringing in two players in his first class who actually both made the NBA (Roshown Mcleod and James Scott). He followed that up by pulling off perhaps the greatest recruiting coup in St. John's history by bringing in the number one and number three rated recruits in America (Felipe Lopez and Zendon Hamilton) along with a 6' 5" Point Guard from perennial national power Oak Hill Academy (Tarik Turner). The optimism was flowing freely but then the wheels came off the bus as none of the hopes ever came to fruition and Mahoney's inability to mold his prized recruits into winners became painfully obvious as the losses piled up over his final three years.

Fran Fraschilla: The team struggled his first season but did show a little improvement and added Lavor Postell another future NBA player to the team. His first full season to recruit and Fraschilla took off bringing in a great five man class led by McDonald's All American Ron Artest and also stellar NY star Reggie Jessie. With this top class added to Postell and Lopez and Hamilton back for their senior seasons St. John's finally was approaching being a top tier team again. They went 13-5 in conference and made it to the semi-finals in the Big East tournament losing in Overtime. They were a seven seed in the NCAA tourney but were unfortunately bounced by Ten Seed Detroit in a disappointing two point loss. Fraschilla hit the post season recruiting trail and brought in star Point Guard Eric Barkley, JUCO standout Bootsy Thornton and local Power Forward dynamo Anthony Glover. Everything looked really optimistic but came apart when Fraschilla was let go in May for Inappropriate interactions with his players and possibly for courting offers from other schools.

Mike Jarvis: The most Topsy Turvy of all SJU coaches. Left with a full cupboard of players from Fran Fraschilla, Jarvis blended their talents really well and the team had one of their best seasons in school history. They went 14-4 in conference, were ranked in the top ten for most of the season, got to the Big East championship game, made the NCAA tournament as a three seed, won three straight tournament games and advanced to the elite eight before losing a three point heart breaker to Ohio State. They finished with a 28-9 record. Jarvis's second season was also very good. It is worth noting that he added no significant pieces by recruiting and lost Ron Artest to the NBA draft and Tyrone Grant to graduation (but Fraschilla recruit Anthony Glover did become eligible). The team did well going 12-4 in conference and wound up winning the Big East tournament and made the NCAA tournament as a two seed ultimately finishing at 25-8. They won their first round game against # 15 seed Northern Arizona (BTW the last NCAA tournament victory for the school) but lost their second round game to tenth seeded Gonzaga. Losing Barkley, Thornton and Postell after the season left the cupboard bare and only Glover and Jessie were left from Fraschilla's recruits, but Jarvis pulled in a highly rated class led by McDonald's All American Omar Cook. Unfortunately the team never jelled and Cook who was talented could never be the type of leader to elevate the players around him and the team wound up a disappointing 14-15.

The next two seasons under Jarvis were successful only because of the brilliant JUCO Guard Marcus Hatten. Unlike Jarvis's first two teams that were laden with talent, his last two full seasons were as successful as they were only because Hatten put the team on his back and carried them there. Hatten's first year they won 20 games and made the tournament as a nine seed before getting bounced by eighth seeded Wisconsin. In Hatten's second year he singlehandedly led them to 21 wins and an improbable NIT championship.

What was masked partially by the two years of Hatten's success was the complete deterioration of the program. Local bonds with High School coaches were broken, recruits with questionable character were being brought in, NCAA rules were being ignored, the talent level was lowered and the seeds of destruction were in place.

The next season everything hit the fan and Jarvis was fired six games into the season following bad losses to Hofstra and Fairfield. Many bad things followed: program sanctions because of under the table money paid to a player, a sex scandal involving players and a woman trying to extort money from them by falsely alleging rape in their hotel room, suspensions and having to finish the year with mostly walk-ons.

Norm Roberts: Left with Sanctions, scandals and little talent he was brought in to rebuild the program from scratch the right way. Roberts definitely brought back some dignity to the program and he was certainly a man of character, but was unable to ever build a winner at SJU. During his six years at the helm his teams never finished better than one game over five hundred and never finished better than eleventh place in the Big East. He restored some class to the program lost under Jarvis but could neither pull in a major recruit or coach up the talent he had to be competitive in the Big East. The fact that he lasted as long as he did is far more of a testament to his character than to his coaching ability.

Steve Lavin: Hit the ground running his first year even though he added just one player Dwayne Polee II to Roberts returning players. Despite that, Lavin got returning players (DJ Kennedy, Dwight Hardy, Justin Brownlee, Justin Burrell,Paris Horne, Sean Evans and Malik Boothe) to gel as a team like they never had done before winning 21 games, going 12-6 (tying for third) in the conference and making the tournament as a six seed (losing in the first round to eleventh seeded Gonzaga). He hit the recruiting trail hard and signed nine high profile players (seven who became eligible right away). The five freshman (Maurice Harkless, D'Angelo Harrison, Sir Dominic Pointer, Amir Garrett and Phil Greene) were a great start. Unfortunately a few games into his second season it was revealed that Coach Lavin had prostate cancer and would not be able to continue for the rest of the year. The team finished 11-17 under interim coach Mike Dunlap but the Young Freshman Players gained some valuable playing experience. He returned to the bench the following year and over the next three years St. John's improved winning 17, 20 and 21 games, making the NIT twice and finally making the NCAA's in Harrison, Pointer and Greene's senior season. Back in the tournament as a nine seed they were bounced by eighth seeded San Diego State. Lavin was never able to get his teams to break through to a higher level and was was also unable to recruit like he had done in his first full off season and was ultimately let go.

Chris Mullin: With no prior coaching experience the hiring of the greatest player in the history of the program was an outside the box move. Left with an empty cupboard and hired after most of the recruiting for the upcoming season had been done, Mullin had to scramble to just field a team. It was no surprise that the team finished an abysmal 8-24 including 1-17 in conference. His first true off season of recruiting brought in local star Shamorie Ponds who would be the centerpiece chip that Mullin would build around. Although the team improved its record each season winning 14, 16 and 21 games and considerable talent was added around Ponds, something was still missing. In that final 21 win season, SJU underachieved and barely squeaked into the first four play in game of the NCAA tournament, where they were bounced as a co eleventh seed by Arizona State. With a four year record of 59-73 as well as a Big East conference record of 20-52 and no major recruits to supplement his core players impending exodus Mullin was let go.

All of this has led to the hiring of Mike Anderson. Hopefully he will be the one to fill the huge void of sustained quality that has been missing for almost thirty years now. To me, he seems to have the right combination of drive, coaching acumen, integrity, leadership skills and commitment to excellence to make this happen.

The lesson learned from these SJU predecessors is that it takes many different attributes to make this work and that it must not only be built, but sustained before a coach here can be deemed a success.
 
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[quote="Mean Gene" post=391245][quote="Phil G" post=391243]I hear ya with Mahoney
I understood- not good hire I’m sure Louie had input[/quote]

There way no way in hell that Mahoney wasn’t getting the job after Louie retired.[/quote]

That's true. But it doesn't change the fact that it was a bad hire.
North Carolina made the same mistake by giving the job to long time assistant Bill Gutheridge when Dean Smith finally retired and they had the advantage of having seen how it worked out for us, yet still did it.

Its hard not to give the #2 guy who has been loyal for a long time his "shot".
 
[quote="SJUFAN2" post=391260][quote="Mean Gene" post=391245][quote="Phil G" post=391243]I hear ya with Mahoney
I understood- not good hire I’m sure Louie had input[/quote]

There way no way in hell that Mahoney wasn’t getting the job after Louie retired.[/quote]

That's true. But it doesn't change the fact that it was a bad hire.
North Carolina made the same mistake by giving the job to long time assistant Bill Gutheridge when Dean Smith finally retired and they had the advantage of having seen how it worked out for us, yet still did it.

Its hard not to give the #2 guy who has been loyal for a long time his "shot".[/quote]

True. Craig Esherick was another case.
 
Others may remember better or have more direct insight, but the only other names I recalled heading at the time were Fordham's coach Nick Macarchuk, and Pete Gillen at X, before he went to Providence, and he didn't end up doing much there.

Even if Mahoney was a lock, were there any other names being floated that you recall?
 
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[quote="IDRAFT" post=391262][quote="SJUFAN2" post=391260][quote="Mean Gene" post=391245][quote="Phil G" post=391243]I hear ya with Mahoney
I understood- not good hire I’m sure Louie had input[/quote]

There way no way in hell that Mahoney wasn’t getting the job after Louie retired.[/quote]

That's true. But it doesn't change the fact that it was a bad hire.
North Carolina made the same mistake by giving the job to long time assistant Bill Gutheridge when Dean Smith finally retired and they had the advantage of having seen how it worked out for us, yet still did it.

Its hard not to give the #2 guy who has been loyal for a long time his "shot".[/quote]

True. Craig Esherick was another case.[/quote]

I'd forgotten about Esherick.

I wonder if its ever worked out? Can anyone recall a school losing a HOF level head coach, then turning over the reigns to a long time assistant who was over 50 and who went on to great success?
 
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