[quote="Beast of the East" post=327590]If we do or don't get a bid is really not the question. With 3 games remaining we had a chance to control our own destiny and emphatically punch our ticket by winning at home vs. Xavier and on the road vs. DePaul. We failed to win either, and now will rely on the metrics of the selection committee. Fact is, if you don't win either or likely both of these games, you don't deserve to be in.
Injuries have certainly played a part in our bad fortunes, but despite all the clamoring to use more of our bench, when forced to because of these injuries, neither Trimble, nor Williams, nor Keita, or Roberts seemed ready to become prime time players and step it up. For that matter, neither Ponds, Clark, or Simon stepped it up either. While Figueroa had his moments, I tend to discount the first 35 minutes of a very good performance, if the last 5 or so are forgettable.
This will likely be a near miss season, but even if we eke out a bid, unless we recapture the energy that beat Villanova and Marquette 3 out of 4 times, we will be in and out early.
So, what do we do? Well, for one, Mullin came here to re-establish the program. With the best attendance in 27 seasons, including selling out the unattractive CA 7 times against the bottom part of the Big East and OOC games, the city has most definitely caught on and become SJU fans. It's not an accident that we averaged over 16,000 of mostly our own fans at MSG, and do you throw that away because this team wasn't good enough? Smart money says no.
I don't care how it gets done, but we simply need better players and more of them to compete at the highest levels of college basketball. Ponds at his best is an exhilarating, nearly unstoppable juggernaut who will slice you up from the outside, inside, dish, rebound and steal. When he's human, as he has been of late, he's G league material and an invite to NBA camps, not a draft pick. We simply didn't see enough of Heron at his best to know who the real Heron is. Clark is a complimentary player and a nice one, but the burden of playing bigger guys on a smaller team put him in trouble far too often. Simon often is MIA more than you'd like. Figgy is a high wire act with great instincts, but I'm not sure he is a marquee player at this point.
Best guess is we cross our fingers that Heron returns, say a few novenas that Ponds chooses SJU over Europe, and wait for next season. If Mullin were to leave, it would be his decision, but despite all the criticisms of coaching wold be a setback for the program if he were to depart now.[/quote]
Of course it would be a setback temporarily, but so would leaving someone in a toxic relationship. The key word is "temporarily". Arrows need to be pulled back before they move forward. If you know something isn't working, why keep doing the same thing? The definition of insanity...well you get it. Attendance has been great, but does that keep up with all the underachieving? A big part of that was Mullin but another big part was that we were supposed to have a ridiculously talented roster. National pundits were talking about how insane our guards were. If we can't even make the tournament or barely eke it out with this roster with all the experience, what do we do next year when we have much less talent? We were all clamoring for big men for years...didn't happen. We were all clamoring for a staff change for years...didn't happen. Too little too late IMO. G'Town, Xavier, PC, Creighton, Marquette, Butler, and Nova are all surely going to be better next year. We have zero chance with much less talent.
By the way, who cares if we have the best attendance in the nation if we have an awful product on the court? You really think the attendance continues if we are nowhere near the tourney again? Before this season the attendance wasn't anything special save for a few games in the Mullin era from what I've seen.
And yes, Bobby Hurley!
