Delaware St., Tues. Nov. 29, 6:30pm, FS2/970AM

[bamafan]

This game literally made me lose my desire to attend another St. John's game this year.
This loss was on everyone from players to coaches.  Mullin pulled a Lavin with the starting lineup.  Hopefully Sima and Lovett learned a lesson tonight.  The downside was he started Ellison and Mussini. 
Other than the starting lineup the other change was the coaching staff's apparent lack of interest in coaching from start to finish.  The Delaware State coach zoned the Johnnies all game long and had his players exhibit good passing which resulted in mostly wide open shots, most of which went into the basket.  Mullin spent a lot of time rubbing his head, his face and gradually turning beet red from embarrassment.  Apparently having given up on his interior players Mullin's offensive game plan was to just hoist three pointers, most of which missed.  As I worried last year about the complete lack of defense, this year, with better players, we actually look worse.  That God Zach Brown signed because no talented bigs could be confident playing for this crew.  Sima, Yakwe, Alibegovic and Owens all look like they just stepped foot on campus even though they played and practiced with each other last year.
Mullin has been out coached in every game except for the rare games where the other team was totally devoid of talent and size.  This could all be biting off more than Mullin could chew on the early season schedule and tired and dejected players but the odd starting lineup, especially with the talentless Ellison starting, may be a sign of deeper problems.
Mullin looked punch drunk at the end of the game.  He looked like he didn't know what hit him.  He resembled Jeff Ruland in his final year at Iona.  I am actually worried that he may be over his head and that he will not handle more losing well.  Of course we will win some more games and it is obvious that we need to recruit over these one dimensional players but from the Slice divorce to the Mitch Richmond hiring, Mullin has not shown himself to be stable enough with staff and may have a false superiority complex as evidenced by choosing not to hire an actual coach to support him and his team and by making waves regarding the structure of the athletic department.
The other oddity is putting his house up for sale less than a year after closing.  An omen or just a lousy decision maker?  I am less worried about Mullin having two losing seasons or getting fired and more worried he will just throw in the towel. 


 

[/quote]
Good post 72 but why be worried Mullin will throw in the towel?

 

[1and1sju]

We didn't come to play today. Plain and simple.

The effort simply was not there until the last 5 minutes. And even then it was lacking.

We needed to pound the ball inside and we showed absolutely no interest in doing that. Sima Owens and Yakwe had big height advantages and could jump over the DS defenders.

We are not going to win if our only method of scoring is 3pt jumpers from Lovett, Ponds, Mussini, and Ahmed.
They are OK shooters. None of them are great pure shooters.

We need to generate offense in other ways. Tonight we should've been taking it to their undersized front court.

 

[RedStormNC]

in the few times we got close to attempting to guard a jumpshot, 3-pt etc... I don't even think any of our guys feet got off the ground.

The half-assed getting one hand stretched out, just doesn't cut it....

Embarrasing.

 

[paultzman]

Per Roger Rubin
#sjubb's Mullin: "Defensively, they scored at will…64% in the first half and 58% overall. That’s where the game was lost and won for them."

 

[basketballjones]

The effort on defense for the first 37 minutes as opposed to the last 3 minutes was telling. What was also telling was the inability of the coaching staff to correct that lack of effort in the first 37.

Mullin better fix this mess quickly or we will lose recruiting momentum and high level recruits will never show up with any sort of regularity. Stop fooling around with the starting lineup. This team looks unprepared and lacking chemistry, effort on defense and basic continuity on offense. Yakwe and Sima particularly have gone backwards and it seems obvious they didn't put in the work necessary to improve over the summer. We also need more than one recruit next year to continue to upgrade the talent. The focus on 2018 isn't gonna work if the team can't even play hard.

 

[1and1sju]

in the few times we got close to attempting to guard a jumpshot, 3-pt etc... I don't even think any of our guys feet got off the ground.

The half-assed getting one hand stretched out, just doesn't cut it....

Embarrasing.

+1
Lots of token defense tonight. Like you say... about 3 ft away from their man with a hand stretched out. Close enough not to look bad, but we never gmade them uncomfortable or forced them into errors. That's what good defense is.

And honestly Sima and Yakwe weren't great when they had to help. A few blocks. But too often they were late getting there.

 

[ras]

Per Roger Rubin
#sjubb's Mullin: "Defensively, they scored at will…64% in the first half and 58% overall. That’s where the game was lost and won for them."

This year is worse than last year in the respect we were young , no pg ,limited talent,and willing to give Mullin a pass This year we have returning players and Ponds ,Bash and Lovett and we look just as bad. This might be my lowest point as a fan.

 

[mjmaherjr]

Every player and coach should be forced to run laps when Ponds is the leading rebounder

 

[RedStormNC]

Or take off the skirts they are wearing.

 

[CBA1992]

Rock bottom. Pathetic. Awful. Almost surreal. No idea how this could happen and no, we are not overreacting. Getting out coached and out the played by a borderline D2 team simply can't happen. We are a member of the BE conference and this is game DePaul wins by 15.

Blame goes all the way around on this one. Every player, every coach. Nobody is expecting this team to go anywhere this year, but we are looking for improvement. Not sure we can recover from this one.

The Cuse game coming up could be an 30 point loss. I sure hope not. Looking like 3-10 is very possible. Who would have thought.

 

[bamafan]

There have been some who say we should have hired Mike Rice as an assistant. Problem is this team may need the old Mike Rice to get them going. :dry:

 

[Ray Morgan]

Right after the game, I got a call from a friend that was an assistant coach years ago at several junior colleges. He didn't criticize the coaching staff, or blame the loss on the failure to make adjustments at halftime, or the starting lineup, or the team taking too many threes. He is not a SJU fan, so has no bias. He offered his analysis with these 5 words:
"St. John's needs better players".
And, in the end, the game is often as simple as that. The team with the better players wins.

 

[OLV72]

There have been some who say we should have hired Mike Rice as an assistant. Problem is this team may need the old Mike Rice to get them going. :dry:

I'd settle for Pecora right now.

 

[Class of 72]

There have been some who say we should have hired Mike Rice as an assistant. Problem is this team may need the old Mike Rice to get them going. :dry:

Part of the problem may be that Mullin is not a very good communicator. Not a knock on his intelligence but like Bill Walton, some great players just don't have the eloquence of one of my all time favorite motivators. Fck political correctness we need to communicate clearly with the players that they are under performing. Here is an example of a good halftime motivational speech:

 https://youtu.be/uMVmhI1SUq0

 

[bamafan]

Right after the game, I got a call from a friend that was an assistant coach years ago at several junior colleges. He didn't criticize the coaching staff, or blame the loss on the failure to make adjustments at halftime, or the starting lineup, or the team taking too many threes. He is not a SJU fan, so has no bias. He offered his analysis with these 5 words:
"St. John's needs better players".
And, in the end, the game is often as simple as that. The team with the better players wins.

So Delaware St has better players than us? We need better players to beat them at home? Sorry, not buying it for tonight. Now to win in the BE, yes.

 

[ras]

Right after the game, I got a call from a friend that was an assistant coach years ago at several junior colleges. He didn't criticize the coaching staff, or blame the loss on the failure to make adjustments at halftime, or the starting lineup, or the team taking too many threes. He is not a SJU fan, so has no bias. He offered his analysis with these 5 words:
"St. John's needs better players".
And, in the end, the game is often as simple as that. The team with the better players wins.

that s BS . None of their players were even considered by SJU. Our player were so much more highly ranked coming out of HS than theirs. We have much better talent relative to them. Del St. was so bad that they had no div 1 wins. Nevertheless, we lost. Looked horrible. If the ship doesn't right itself we are going to loose out on future recruits. I am not optimistic about the ship righting itself, We had no inside game at all, despite the size advantage.

 

[Ray Morgan]

Right after the game, I got a call from a friend that was an assistant coach years ago at several junior colleges. He didn't criticize the coaching staff, or blame the loss on the failure to make adjustments at halftime, or the starting lineup, or the team taking too many threes. He is not a SJU fan, so has no bias. He offered his analysis with these 5 words:
"St. John's needs better players".
And, in the end, the game is often as simple as that. The team with the better players wins.

So Delaware St has better players than us? We need better players to beat them at home? Sorry, not buying it for tonight. Now to win in the BE, yes.

Almost to a man, they certainly looked better on both ends of the floor. We all jumped the gun, even those that believed we had a ceiling of 15-16 wins. To be clear, we need better front court players, and better back ups at every other position. I tried to give the benefit of the doubt to Ellison, as we need his size to offset our undersized and underweight guards. Tonight, against comp that, in theory, he should compete with, he looked awful. As did just about everyone. Sima doesn't even block shots anymore. That's all Yakwe does. At least he does that well. Mussini can do one thing. Unfortunately, his 30% 3 point shooting is nothing great, and certainly doesn't make up for the points he gives up. Amar, Freud, and Owens? In the words of Dean Vernon Wormer, no grade point average. Ellison? 0.0. All f's.

 

[OLV72]

Right after the game, I got a call from a friend that was an assistant coach years ago at several junior colleges. He didn't criticize the coaching staff, or blame the loss on the failure to make adjustments at halftime, or the starting lineup, or the team taking too many threes. He is not a SJU fan, so has no bias. He offered his analysis with these 5 words:
"St. John's needs better players".
And, in the end, the game is often as simple as that. The team with the better players wins.

So Delaware St has better players than us? We need better players to beat them at home? Sorry, not buying it for tonight. Now to win in the BE, yes.

Almost to a man, they certainly looked better on both ends of the floor. We all jumped the gun, even those that believed we had a ceiling of 15-16 wins. To be clear, we need better front court players, and better back ups at every other position. I tried to give the benefit of the doubt to Ellison, as we need his size to offset our undersized and underweight guards. Tonight, against comp that, in theory, he should compete with, he looked awful. As did just about everyone. Sima doesn't even block shots anymore. That's all Yakwe does. At least he does that well. Mussini can do one thing. Unfortunately, his 30% 3 point shooting is nothing great, and certainly doesn't make up for the points he gives up. Amar, Freud, and Owens? In the words of Dean Vernon Wormer, no grade point average. Ellison? 0.0. All f's.

Ray, Delaware State came into this game on a 21 game D1 losing streak. Baruch would have played a better game against this team. They would have come into the game prepared to play. I don't blame the players. It is on the guys that are paid to have the players prepared and motivated for 40 minutes.

 

[mjmaherjr]

Right after the game, I got a call from a friend that was an assistant coach years ago at several junior colleges. He didn't criticize the coaching staff, or blame the loss on the failure to make adjustments at halftime, or the starting lineup, or the team taking too many threes. He is not a SJU fan, so has no bias. He offered his analysis with these 5 words:
"St. John's needs better players".
And, in the end, the game is often as simple as that. The team with the better players wins.

So Delaware St has better players than us? We need better players to beat them at home? Sorry, not buying it for tonight. Now to win in the BE, yes.

Almost to a man, they certainly looked better on both ends of the floor. We all jumped the gun, even those that believed we had a ceiling of 15-16 wins. To be clear, we need better front court players, and better back ups at every other position. I tried to give the benefit of the doubt to Ellison, as we need his size to offset our undersized and underweight guards. Tonight, against comp that, in theory, he should compete with, he looked awful. As did just about everyone. Sima doesn't even block shots anymore. That's all Yakwe does. At least he does that well. Mussini can do one thing. Unfortunately, his 30% 3 point shooting is nothing great, and certainly doesn't make up for the points he gives up. Amar, Freud, and Owens? In the words of Dean Vernon Wormer, no grade point average. Ellison? 0.0. All f's.

Ray, Delaware State came into this game on a 21 game D1 losing streak. Baruch would have played a better game against this team. They would have come into the game prepared to play. I don't blame the players. It is on the guys that are paid to have the players prepared and motivated for 40 minutes.

we aren't even a cupcake anymore. After todays game We Are......

[attachment]autumnr.lw.bigasscake.jpg[/attachment]

 

[Ray Morgan]

Right after the game, I got a call from a friend that was an assistant coach years ago at several junior colleges. He didn't criticize the coaching staff, or blame the loss on the failure to make adjustments at halftime, or the starting lineup, or the team taking too many threes. He is not a SJU fan, so has no bias. He offered his analysis with these 5 words:
"St. John's needs better players".
And, in the end, the game is often as simple as that. The team with the better players wins.

So Delaware St has better players than us? We need better players to beat them at home? Sorry, not buying it for tonight. Now to win in the BE, yes.

Almost to a man, they certainly looked better on both ends of the floor. We all jumped the gun, even those that believed we had a ceiling of 15-16 wins. To be clear, we need better front court players, and better back ups at every other position. I tried to give the benefit of the doubt to Ellison, as we need his size to offset our undersized and underweight guards. Tonight, against comp that, in theory, he should compete with, he looked awful. As did just about everyone. Sima doesn't even block shots anymore. That's all Yakwe does. At least he does that well. Mussini can do one thing. Unfortunately, his 30% 3 point shooting is nothing great, and certainly doesn't make up for the points he gives up. Amar, Freud, and Owens? In the words of Dean Vernon Wormer, no grade point average. Ellison? 0.0. All f's.

Ray, Delaware State came into this game on a 21 game D1 losing streak. Baruch would have played a better game against this team. They would have come into the game prepared to play. I don't blame the players. It is on the guys that are paid to have the players prepared and motivated for 40 minutes.

The players stunk up the joint. It's on them. Do we have better talent? At the guard position, yes. But not tonight. Our bigs are, to use the favorite phrase of the president-elect, a disaster. Our bench is a double disaster. We have to accept that, besides more experience, Mullin needs to recruit better talent. Or base playing time on production and set strict guidelines. Jarvis forbade most of his players from shooting threes. When one of them asked why he couldn't shoot threes, Jarvis said it's because he liked driving his Mercedes. The problem is Mullin doesn't need this job to drive a fleet of Mercedes. That's my major knock on him. Give players a job, and hold them accountable.