I think you can become tougher, but its usually over a course of years, not weeks or months.
Sorry but I can see none of you flower children were ever in the military with drill sargents or, God forbid, Parris Island for basic training.
You were required to become tougher in 6-8 weeks followed by AIT in your military specialty (MOS) which lasted around five weeks.
Those that were not mentally tough after those weeks were boloed out of the service or left voluntarily with a general, usual medical, discharge.
Now, for those who will say "how can you compare 18-22 year olds in the military to basketball athletes the same age, open your mind to what these young people are being prepared and trained to do. If a player is looking for a father figure to be nice to him and give him his participation trophy, is that a player you want on your team?
I saw young men cry after being dressed down by drill sargents or refuse to go into the tear gas bunker, and chose to be disciplined instead. Would you want that guy on the battlefield with you?
Rick Pitino upset some of you because he mentioned our shitty facilities, which he said are being improved for practice purposes and inferred that Carnesecca arena is basically a high school gym dump. He wants games played in arenas like at Louisville because St. John's has a metropolitan following. He's right on all accounts.
For the Creighton game I'm attending with over 30 friends, none of whom went to St. John's. They are mostly retired Jewish professionals from Long Island who are basketball junkies and who up in Brooklyn and Queens where they considered SJ the city team.
As for the player critiques, do any of you disagree with his assessments?
Do any of you think that he has not addressed them personally and in practices on how to compensate for those deficiencies? After 5 games where those players failed to buckle down and follow the coaches tutelage, he had enough.
Coaches like coach K, Knight, Boeheim, and some others regularly called out their team's deficiencies after losses, as rare as they were. It's a motivational tool to try and penetratre the mindsets of players that live in their own heads. It is a major problem with athletes these days where they think they can demand more from the coach than vice-versa. They literally mimic what professional players do to their coaches in the NBA. The NBA game has become an individual all-star game where the designated stars control the team.
Sorry, but after a few of the recent melt downs in the 4th quarter of 6 of the last 8 games, it is the players that have something to prove to their coach.
This is a Jekyll and Hyde team. You have a team that can sweep Villanova and beat Butler and Xavier and you have a team that allows inferior teams like Michigan and Boston College to beat them in NYC.
