No doubt Danny's done well at both Wagner and URI. The question is: How will he do when he's recruiting higher-level talent against the likes of Cal (whose signing of Briscoe dealt a crucial blow to Lavin's goal of building a program here), Pitino, Coach K, etc. -- the talent level he's going to need if St. John's is to be a perennial power in the BE?
Who are the candidates being mentioned that have experience in recruiting higher level talent? Oh, right, no one. Which is why a big name like Mullin or two rebuilding jobs at the relatively highest level of the candidates for Dan Hurley makes them the most attractive candidates. Just seems like small minded thinking to me.
If I'm "small-minded," austour, it's because I have a head the size of a fist. For the record, all I was doing was questioning whether Danny was up to recruiting at this level. A legitimate question I would think, and one we won't know the answer to until that time comes, when and if it does. Mullin, of course, would certainly be a draw for a lot of kids, at least initially, but, as I've noted in other posts, I don't see him taking the job -- not to be misconstrued as my being against his taking it; I think it would make a huge splash to have Mullin as the face of our program. FWIW, I think I'd prefer Bobby to Danny -- same coaching tree, no great disparity in coaching experience, similar connections to talent-rich NJ programs, greater name recognition; plus I'm not a big fan of Danny's sideline temper tantrums. Whatever. Hopefully, we'll know soon enough.
Perfectly reasonable question. No doubt the Big East is another level of recruiting. But he got E.C. Mathews and Jared Terrell to go to Rhodie, and they have not been in the business of getting those kind of players. If he could get them to go there, who could he get to come to SJU? I guess it's one of those questions that cuts both ways - can he recruit at a higher level, but at the same time will a higher level/more to offer allow him to get even better players?
Should also be noted one of his St. Benedict's teams had 8 Division 1 players + JR Smith. He's familiar with dealing with the highest level kids.
Prefer Danny only slightly to Bobby. But one of the primary reasons is there actually is a fairly substantial disparity in coaching experience. After Seton Hall Danny pretty much jumped right into coaching. A year with his dad followed by 4 years as an assistant at Rutgers, beginning in 1997. These years are particularly important because he cut his teeth spending 250+ days a year on the
road. Then 9 years with St. Benedict's, before 5 as a head coach at the college level. That's 19 years of experience, and he worked his way up the various levels on a fairly normal trajectory.
Bobby kind of parachuted in with Danny at Wagner after mostly being out of the game for 12 years while Danny was on the grind. Again, doesn't mean Bobby won't be a better coach than Danny, but Danny has significantly more and diversified experience.
