DePaul

Against my better judgment, I listened to some of Lavin’s comments from today’s pre-game press conference. He talked about the fact that St John’s has no players who’ve been to the NCAA tournament and that really hurt our ability to finish against Villanova.

Seriously? That’s why we can’t close a conference game? And I guess it’s just a freakin’ miracle that Kentucky can beat Lousiville (among others) with not one player who’s seen any NCAA tournament action.
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I kind of get what he was saying. Winning begets winning, and in college knowing how to win games separates teams. This current crop of players haven't won consistently at St. John's. The wheels fell off the last two seasons, and for the three year players (Greene, Pointer, Harrison) they have no point of reference on how to pull out big games consistently. Syracuse obviously has that, Nova too, and Wisconsin as well. In part we played each of those teams fairly evenly, but they knew how to win games. I don't think you need tournament experience to do that, but in the dance it's do or die, and that trumps regular season as experience on performing well under pressure.
 
Against my better judgment, I listened to some of Lavin’s comments from today’s pre-game press conference. He talked about the fact that St John’s has no players who’ve been to the NCAA tournament and that really hurt our ability to finish against Villanova.

Seriously? That’s why we can’t close a conference game? And I guess it’s just a freakin’ miracle that Kentucky can beat Lousiville (among others) with not one player who’s seen any NCAA tournament action.
Click to expand...

I kind of get what he was saying. Winning begets winning, and in college knowing how to win games separates teams. This current crop of players haven't won consistently at St. John's. The wheels fell off the last two seasons, and for the three year players (Greene, Pointer, Harrison) they have no point of reference on how to pull out big games consistently. Syracuse obviously has that, Nova too, and Wisconsin as well. In part we played each of those teams fairly evenly, but they knew how to win games. I don't think you need tournament experience to do that, but in the dance it's do or die, and that trumps regular season as experience on performing well under pressure.
Click to expand...

What is your explanation for Kentucky, then? They're mostly freshmen this year and a couple of sophmores who only saw first round NIT last year.
Could coaching somehow factor into this?
 
Against my better judgment, I listened to some of Lavin’s comments from today’s pre-game press conference. He talked about the fact that St John’s has no players who’ve been to the NCAA tournament and that really hurt our ability to finish against Villanova.

Seriously? That’s why we can’t close a conference game? And I guess it’s just a freakin’ miracle that Kentucky can beat Lousiville (among others) with not one player who’s seen any NCAA tournament action.
Click to expand...

I kind of get what he was saying. Winning begets winning, and in college knowing how to win games separates teams. This current crop of players haven't won consistently at St. John's. The wheels fell off the last two seasons, and for the three year players (Greene, Pointer, Harrison) they have no point of reference on how to pull out big games consistently. Syracuse obviously has that, Nova too, and Wisconsin as well. In part we played each of those teams fairly evenly, but they knew how to win games. I don't think you need tournament experience to do that, but in the dance it's do or die, and that trumps regular season as experience on performing well under pressure.
Click to expand...

What is your explanation for Kentucky, then? They're mostly freshmen this year and a couple of sophmores who only saw first round NIT last year.
Could coaching somehow factor into this?
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Of course coaching plays into it, but also think that Kentucky sometimes recruit 5 of the top 7 or 8 players in the nation. The talent discrepancy is so huge that its almost inevitable that they win even without senior leadership. That situation is the freakazoid of college basketball. More reasonably, Gonzaga wins regularly with upper class experience, and a succession of winning.
 
Accurate assessment .I hope the board stops with the firing ot Lavin While I am disappointed I still have faith in his hire. It just will take a bit longer to get were we want to be He is a good ambassador the for school and a good person and no matter what some say knowledgeable about the game and yes he is a decent coach with.about average recruiting skills who will bring top players to the program
 
Looking at the Top 25 box scores last night, Kansas played only 6 players more than 10 minutes and 3 played 33 or more. Iowa St. played 7 players total and 4 played 31 ore more minutes. Syracuse played 6 guys more than 5 minutes and 4 played 35 or more minutes.

In SJU's 3 conference games thus far only 3 players have played 30 minutes or more in any game. Our depth gives us little/no advantage if we aren't going to press, and Lavin's approach is therefore largely an outlier distributing the minutes so widely. If three Top 15 teams can accomplish the herculean feat of identifying the best players on their roster and cetering their rotation around them we can too. I understand these teams may have more top-heavy elite talent which makes this task easier, but we don't have enough players playing well to force the analysis to be complex. Let's simplify:

Jordan and Harrison should be physically unable to stay in the game in order to come out of the game. That's the evaluation process. They are 35+ minute players for this team right now.

Sampson is a minimum 30 minute player. Not that he's playing great, but he gives us more upside than any other option and might benefit from just being allowed to play and get in the flow.

Obekpa is 25+ conservatively. Our only defensive anchor and along with Sampson the only presence on the offensive glass.

That's 125 of the 200 available minutes between 4 players. Sanchez is probably a 20 minute guy right now, and it's not worth debating what Greene and Dom are or aren't from a minutes perspective because Lavin is giving them at least 20. Meritorious or not, that's 185 minutes between 7 players, and at least looks like a rotation.

Hopefully coach goes to a tighter rotation starting tonight, because it's too critical a point in the season not to.
 
If Harrison is unable to play , SJU must press all game unless De Paul has an extremely quick back court. If we don't how do we score even 65?
 
1 point dogs.
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now 2 point favorites.
that's a lot of SJU money.
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I might be reading too much into this but that tells me that Harrison went from possibly playing to definitively playing. Hope I'm right.
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I hope you are right too, but I think it means that a significant amount of the money in this game was being bet on St. John's.
 
@ECoastBias: For those who like betting odds: the line for tonight's St. John's/ DePaul game opened at -1 St. John's as faves. SJU now favored -2.5.
 
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