CBS Blogger picks SJ 14th in Big East

L

LINY89

Active member
 "It was just 18 months ago that the Johnnies were an NCAA tournament team. Seems like five years, right? But Steve Lavin -- who, thankfully, is all the way back and healthy, having recovered from cancer -- still has a rebuilding project on his hands. And he lost his ace assistant coach, Mike Dunlap, to the Charlotte Bobcats. The Red Storm have pieces; they're all just raw now. I'm admittedly more down on this team than most."

-Matt Norlander CBS blogger

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebas...ll-previews-its-end-of-big-east-as-we-know-it

Wow...talk about being nit picky and not giving credit. One of his keys about us is that we lose our ASSISTANT coach...really? Who cares? We have our HEAD coach back! He leaves out returning Harrison, our highest scoring freshman ever who arguably would have won Big East ROY if it weren't for Harkless. Also getting Garrett and Pointer back who were also top 100's. That's 3 key players returning. Of course he fails to mention we just got another top 25 recruiting class in addition to returning those guys including arguably the best shot blocker in the Big East and a national team player. I just don't get the negativity from these guys...it's honestly as if they are mad at SJ for something personal. I really think if we were UConn, Nova, or even Cincy, these bloggers and analysts would be salivating over our potential. Are we young? Yes, but we have 3 key guys coming back and if Sanchez can play, he's 24! We seem to be a double standard. Young top 100's for other schools seems to make people impressed, but youth for us is held against us. Every time I read a stupid blogger's unwarranted negative spin on us while they rate teams way higher with much less talent, it makes me hungrier for our guys to shut them up.
 
 "It was just 18 months ago that the Johnnies were an NCAA tournament team. Seems like five years, right? But Steve Lavin -- who, thankfully, is all the way back and healthy, having recovered from cancer -- still has a rebuilding project on his hands. And he lost his ace assistant coach, Mike Dunlap, to the Charlotte Bobcats. The Red Storm have pieces; they're all just raw now. I'm admittedly more down on this team than most."

-Matt Norlander CBS blogger

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebas...ll-previews-its-end-of-big-east-as-we-know-it

Wow...talk about being nit picky and not giving credit. One of his keys about us is that we lose our ASSISTANT coach...really? Who cares? We have our HEAD coach back! He leaves out returning Harrison, our highest scoring freshman ever who arguably would have won Big East ROY if it weren't for Harkless. Also getting Garrett and Pointer back who were also top 100's. That's 3 key players returning. Of course he fails to mention we just got another top 25 recruiting class in addition to returning those guys including arguably the best shot blocker in the Big East and a national team player. I just don't get the negativity from these guys...it's honestly as if they are mad at SJ for something personal. I really think if we were UConn, Nova, or even Cincy, these bloggers and analysts would be salivating over our potential. Are we young? Yes, but we have 3 key guys coming back and if Sanchez can play, he's 24! We seem to be a double standard. Young top 100's for other schools seems to make people impressed, but youth for us is held against us. Every time I read a stupid blogger's unwarranted negative spin on us while they rate teams way higher with much less talent, it makes me hungrier for our guys to shut them up.
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Agreed, this stuff is nonsense. I really like the players we have, and hopefully we get off on the right foot on Tuesday. Build a little confidence and then make some noise in Charleston. The key for us is not to lose games we should win early in the season (losing only to bigger name teams, if at all). Once we fully get our act together with our full court pressure, Branch joins in, and hopefully Orlando and Marco are cleared, I like our chances to shut all these "experts" up.
 
As long as the criminals runnin' the NCAA do not screw us with Sanchez & Marco.. :furious: ... this team is top 7 Big East, IMHO!
 
 "It was just 18 months ago that the Johnnies were an NCAA tournament team. Seems like five years, right? But Steve Lavin -- who, thankfully, is all the way back and healthy, having recovered from cancer -- still has a rebuilding project on his hands. And he lost his ace assistant coach, Mike Dunlap, to the Charlotte Bobcats. The Red Storm have pieces; they're all just raw now. I'm admittedly more down on this team than most."

-Matt Norlander CBS blogger

http://www.cbssports.com/collegebas...ll-previews-its-end-of-big-east-as-we-know-it

Wow...talk about being nit picky and not giving credit. One of his keys about us is that we lose our ASSISTANT coach...really? Who cares? We have our HEAD coach back! He leaves out returning Harrison, our highest scoring freshman ever who arguably would have won Big East ROY if it weren't for Harkless. Also getting Garrett and Pointer back who were also top 100's. That's 3 key players returning. Of course he fails to mention we just got another top 25 recruiting class in addition to returning those guys including arguably the best shot blocker in the Big East and a national team player. I just don't get the negativity from these guys...it's honestly as if they are mad at SJ for something personal. I really think if we were UConn, Nova, or even Cincy, these bloggers and analysts would be salivating over our potential. Are we young? Yes, but we have 3 key guys coming back and if Sanchez can play, he's 24! We seem to be a double standard. Young top 100's for other schools seems to make people impressed, but youth for us is held against us. Every time I read a stupid blogger's unwarranted negative spin on us while they rate teams way higher with much less talent, it makes me hungrier for our guys to shut them up.
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At least he had UConn in their rightful place above DePaul.

How many preseason polls that have STJ ranked in the bottom 5 of the BE are you going to see, read, digest and then get all worked up about before you see the logic of what this STJ team looks like to an outsider? We are all very close to the program and have a better, if not inflated, feel for the potential of each player. Others can only look at last year's results, a key player leaving early for the NBA and no top 50 recruits in the class of 2012 and predict more of the same. I'll also add that I think JUCO's are especially hard for national writers to assess.  
 
 Stop making excuses for them. There are none. It's not like we are dissing them over projecting us 9th instead of 8th. It's going from a potential tournament team to the worst or 2nd worst team in the league. That's a giant jump. Gates is gone from Cincy, but you don't hear about that. Wayans is gone from Nova, but you don't hear about that. Cincy and Nova will be just fine right? Then we lose a freshman who wasn't even the leading scorer, and we are expected to fall off the face of the earth? BS. As people here have said before, analysts seem to have no clue that we had ZERO depth, a cancer-ridden coach not able to coach us, and we still beat a ranked ND squad, a sweet 16 Cincy squad, and nearly Zona, Texas A&M, Duke, etc. (ranked at the time). You bring up top 50 recruits again as if anything worse than that (i.e top 60) doesn't matter. Rivals uses top 150...it's an honor to even be the select few on that and that's 100 more.

Bottom line, they just didn't do their HW on us and that's their JOB. It wouldn't take long to find out we are actually returning 3 top 100's including our leading scorer plus our top 25 class this year. IMO, it's a much bigger reach to put this team as a bottom feeder rather than a #9 or #10 team. With all that talent, no way we end up close to the basement. 
 
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