Class of 72
Active member
First the general assessment:
Coaching: Incomplete
Recruiting: A-
Players: D
Game Preparation: C
Defense: C
Generally speaking, very little can be taken away from this abysmal season. We hired a coach who was the greatest player at St. John's in our generation who never coached a game in his life at the mid-century age of his life. Perhaps the riskiest hire since Brian Mahoney. Ironically, both were supported by coach Carnesecca who, although in the Hall of Fame, was not an X and O genius. What makes the hire promising is coach Mullin ' s influence in hiring two outstanding recruiters because without getting top players Chris Mullin will not win too many games at St. John's. It has nothing to do with knowing the game of basketball. He has that skill in aces. It has more to do with strategic thinking and planning and most of all communication. I am not sure Chris Mullin will ever fully be equipped with those skill sets. However, recruiting top 50 talent would mask those deficiencies in a couple of years with the right assistant. Therefore coach Mullin gets an incomplete his first year given his team is devoid of any real impact level talent even though his has two promising players in Yakwe and Sima. The rest of the players would not play very much on any other Big East team imo.
Recruiting will be the lifeblood of this staff and they have already recruited two 4 star talents to go along with two 3* talents in Ponds, Lovett, Amhed and Freudenberg. However, they have been unable as yet to sign that 5* player who other teams would have a hard time defending. Great players want to play with other great players nowadays. Mullin needs an impact player to mask his coaching inexperience. When he gets that player, others will follow.
The players this year are a patchwork quilt that is ugly to look at and thankfully will soon be forgotten. Durand Johnson was the only Big East quality player brought on but he was only a role player at Pitt and not a senior leader that some hopped for. His inactivity was evident as was the sheer lack of talent of his transfer running mate Ron Movesoslow. Players such as Mussini and Ellison are just not Big East starting material and they played way too many minutes and those minutes killed any hope of winning many games. Sima and Yakwe are two years away from being major contributors. Ergo, there needs to be a talent infusion ASAP. I know some of you loyalists balk at recruiting over Chris Jones, Federico Mussini and Alibegovic but for Chris Mullin to survive he needs to do just that and Slice should be the one to make that a reality. Calipari at UK is an average coach who always had talent to mask his deficiencies. Even this year with 7 McDonald's AA's his Kentucky team is considered average. The bottom line is St. John's needs to get top talent to be in the top half of the Big East because it is not going to happen with coaching.
Speaking of which, the game preparation and in game coaching has to improve dramatically. Having suffered through Steve Lavin as a coach/figurehead the thing we need least now is just another figurehead who is only good for sound bites. Chris needs to become more engaged than he showed in his rookie year. He needs to install a defensive culture in his players that was completely absent this year. I am fine with his NBA offensive approach once he gets the right players but the college game requires a different approach when it comes to defense. Knowing when to switch to a zone would be nice and knowing when to press and double team would be great but giving clear defensive assignments to players is paramount in order to hold players accountable defensively.
This year was the coaching staff's rookie year. Next year they get promoted to the big show. If they falter next year, there is no Rookie Forum to be demoted to so let's hope we add two more players this season to help us forget Balamou, Jones and Alibegovic getting more playing time than they deserved their entire careers.
Coaching: Incomplete
Recruiting: A-
Players: D
Game Preparation: C
Defense: C
Generally speaking, very little can be taken away from this abysmal season. We hired a coach who was the greatest player at St. John's in our generation who never coached a game in his life at the mid-century age of his life. Perhaps the riskiest hire since Brian Mahoney. Ironically, both were supported by coach Carnesecca who, although in the Hall of Fame, was not an X and O genius. What makes the hire promising is coach Mullin ' s influence in hiring two outstanding recruiters because without getting top players Chris Mullin will not win too many games at St. John's. It has nothing to do with knowing the game of basketball. He has that skill in aces. It has more to do with strategic thinking and planning and most of all communication. I am not sure Chris Mullin will ever fully be equipped with those skill sets. However, recruiting top 50 talent would mask those deficiencies in a couple of years with the right assistant. Therefore coach Mullin gets an incomplete his first year given his team is devoid of any real impact level talent even though his has two promising players in Yakwe and Sima. The rest of the players would not play very much on any other Big East team imo.
Recruiting will be the lifeblood of this staff and they have already recruited two 4 star talents to go along with two 3* talents in Ponds, Lovett, Amhed and Freudenberg. However, they have been unable as yet to sign that 5* player who other teams would have a hard time defending. Great players want to play with other great players nowadays. Mullin needs an impact player to mask his coaching inexperience. When he gets that player, others will follow.
The players this year are a patchwork quilt that is ugly to look at and thankfully will soon be forgotten. Durand Johnson was the only Big East quality player brought on but he was only a role player at Pitt and not a senior leader that some hopped for. His inactivity was evident as was the sheer lack of talent of his transfer running mate Ron Movesoslow. Players such as Mussini and Ellison are just not Big East starting material and they played way too many minutes and those minutes killed any hope of winning many games. Sima and Yakwe are two years away from being major contributors. Ergo, there needs to be a talent infusion ASAP. I know some of you loyalists balk at recruiting over Chris Jones, Federico Mussini and Alibegovic but for Chris Mullin to survive he needs to do just that and Slice should be the one to make that a reality. Calipari at UK is an average coach who always had talent to mask his deficiencies. Even this year with 7 McDonald's AA's his Kentucky team is considered average. The bottom line is St. John's needs to get top talent to be in the top half of the Big East because it is not going to happen with coaching.
Speaking of which, the game preparation and in game coaching has to improve dramatically. Having suffered through Steve Lavin as a coach/figurehead the thing we need least now is just another figurehead who is only good for sound bites. Chris needs to become more engaged than he showed in his rookie year. He needs to install a defensive culture in his players that was completely absent this year. I am fine with his NBA offensive approach once he gets the right players but the college game requires a different approach when it comes to defense. Knowing when to switch to a zone would be nice and knowing when to press and double team would be great but giving clear defensive assignments to players is paramount in order to hold players accountable defensively.
This year was the coaching staff's rookie year. Next year they get promoted to the big show. If they falter next year, there is no Rookie Forum to be demoted to so let's hope we add two more players this season to help us forget Balamou, Jones and Alibegovic getting more playing time than they deserved their entire careers.
