Definitely leaving NYC I'm told.
That has seemed to be the word circulating around for several months. You just hope it was hearsay (and, it still could've been), but seems like it's going to be the case.
I started to feel we weren't in a good position when Lavin never watched him in Vegas.
Maybe, Lavin was paying more attention to priorities in Vegas (big men).
My personal opinion is that Lavin is first and foremost a very smart recruiter. He targets players he believes he has a good chance with and does not exert an inordinate amount of wasted effort on players he has little or no chance of getting. If you look at his first true class he took chances, as he had to, with players who perhaps big time programs may have shied away from, Dlo, Nuri, Jakaar, etc and brought them to Queens. Second true class he targeted Felix and CO, both of whom were originally from Africa, and perhaps did not want to make a major move again. His philosophy worked out well, just like Louie with Bill Wennington who had moved from Montreal to LI following his parents divorce and much as he liked Duke, etc he didn't want to leave where he felt comfortable. With Rysheed he immediately stated he wanted to leave Philadelphia and Lavin being the smart recruiter he is invested the right amount of time and energy to win that MAJOR recruiting battle.
As a matter of fact his recruiting reminds me a great deal of that of Jim Calhoun in his early years at CONNU who I also believe was a very smart recruiter. He took over an NIT level program that had never reached, or come close to reaching, the heights attained by SJU, BC, Villanova, Syracuse or Georgetown and later on Seton Hall and Providence in the 1980s in the Big East. He recruited foreign players from Israel like Nadav Henfield and Doron Sheffer who were not on anyone's radar, players with a checkered past like Caron Butler and players like Ray Allen from South Carolina where the two big state schools are football schools and bball is a distant second. After a while he didn't have to recruit those type of players as doors opened for him everywhere but the initial years recruiting to CONNU was a challenge that Calhoun certainly overcame.
Lavin is doing a great job on the recruiting front IMHO and keeps bringing in better talent. I have no doubt when all is said and done this season we will be very pleased with the talent he will have gotten to commit to SJU. Fear not, despair not, he will loose far more recruiting battles then he will win, but our coach is smart and he will bring in top talent to SJU.
We have to accept that the majority of kids want to go away to school no matter how good the local program is, Christian Laetner didn't go to Syracuse he went to Duke. That is but 1 example and there are too numerous to list. Perhaps there are three kids every year in NYC who could play for SJU but in most circumstances wish to leave NYC. Well I bet there are ten top 100 players who don't live in NY who would be very interested in spending their college years in NYC. Coach will target and find from that group the players who best suit our needs. That I have no doubt.
