Realistic best case scenario for 2021 class?

[quote="redmannorth" post=385846][quote="Beast of the East" post=385842][quote="MCNPA" post=385840]Bottom line though is as as far as coaching goes, Mike Anderson blows those guys out of the water imo overall. Lavin had his successes but always with a ton of talent. I’d like to see Mike Anderson get the talent level to get him and SJU to the next level. We shall see if he can do it.[/quote]

Anderson is a very good coach but he wasn't torched the way Lavin and Mullin would have been for a couple of our last minuute collapses. Im close with some Missouri and Arkansas natives, saw them last summer and all said the same thing, good coach , doesn't recruit well. We shall see.[/quote]

As I have said before CMAs three prior jobs were in states that were anything but a basketball hotbed. CMAs first two classes have been very solid but unspectacular. He is the Anti Lavin in every respect and his recruiting classes reflect his demeanour and personality, far more substance than style and I for one can certainly live with that. Having said that I expect that he will continue to bring in very solid classes which will improve in talent level given that he is now in a far more fertile recruiting area.[/quote]

Don't get me wrong. We made a very good hire, but you need top talent to consistently play in the top 4 of the Big East and it remains to be seen if CMA can deliver that.
 
[quote="Not an alum" post=385837]Amazes me that we didn’t have a 1999 type run w the talent Lavin recruited...[/quote]

Maybe if Harkless had a stayed another year. Or Sampson. Or Obekpa didnt test positive. Or we won one more game when the guys were juniors.

That 1999 team had two young studs (Artest and Barkley), but also had steady/impact upperclassmen layered in- Bootsy, Grant, Postell. The early incarnations of the Lavin teams were too young/lacked upper class stabilizers. Had the two most talented players, Harkless and Sampson, each stayed a year longer respectively, the 2013-2014 and/or 2014-2015 teams would have been much better. The 2013-2014 needed one more win- v. Providence in BET, @ Depaul, @ Nova to get a nod. Obekpa suspension killed our hopes to advance in Lavin's final season.
 
[quote="Moose" post=385816]
However I think he falls behind Riley to me.[/quote]

Assuming Cuffe doesn't move up, the first five kids we sign given the choice should be Riley, Riley, Riley, Riley, and Riley.
 
[quote="Beast of the East" post=385842][quote="MCNPA" post=385840]Bottom line though is as as far as coaching goes, Mike Anderson blows those guys out of the water imo overall. Lavin had his successes but always with a ton of talent. I’d like to see Mike Anderson get the talent level to get him and SJU to the next level. We shall see if he can do it.[/quote]

Anderson is a very good coach but he wasn't torched the way Lavin and Mullin would have been for a couple of our last minuute collapses. Im close with some Missouri and Arkansas natives, saw them last summer and all said the same thing, good coach , doesn't recruit well. We shall see.[/quote]
Maybe he wasn't torched because most realize we had less talent the wonder being the fact that we were even in the game at the end. There is something known as winning time and that is end of game situations where the cream usually rises to the top. As some posters like to say we shall see and i hope the answer is on the positive side.
 
From 2011-2018, St. John’s was able to land 9 top 100 recruits. Lavin signed 7 of them, while Mullin landed 2. In those 8 seasons, St. John’s went 130-133 (54-90). At the same time, at Arkansas, Anderson braught in 7 Top 100 guys. He went 169-102 (78-64).

In college basketball, great coaching is more important than top recruits every single time. Teams like Butler, Creighton, Providence and Seton Hall have not been recruiting better talent than us, they’ve just been out coaching us year in and year out. They have systems, they recruit for those systems, and sprinkle in Top 100 guys when they could.

That’s why I love the Mike Anderson hire so much, because hes a winner, hes on par, if not better than Cooley, McDermott and Willard. Anderson gives the team an identity with his 40 minutes of hell system. He’ll land some Top 100 guys here and there, but more importantly he’ll get guys that fit the identity of the program and want to win. The team had no system or identity under Mullin, didn’t matter who we recruited.
 
Maybe give Mullin credit for 3.. Ponds, Lovett and don't forget Sid Wilson.

Yakwe & Freudenberg within 110 on 247.

Lol.
 
[quote="RedStormNC" post=385861]Maybe give Mullin credit for 3.. Ponds, Lovett and don't forget Sid Wilson.

Yakwe & Freudenberg within 110 on 247.

Lol.[/quote]

Yea lol I just counted him as a flip to Uconn. Yea, Mullin’s recruiting numbers really ain’t bad, it’s just that so many of them seemed to underachieve.
 
Based on the one season he has been at SJU and the recruiting ratings of Lavin, Mullin and Anderson it is evident Anderson wins more with less and for anyone who watched SJU over the last decade I think most would agree his team played harder than the prior two coaches teams.
 
Once you get beyond the top 50 the numbers are completely meaningless. The fact that Freudenberg was 109 and Posh 206 makes that pretty evident.
 
What makes me optimistic about StJ's mens basketball future is that for the first time in a long time it has experienced individuals running the show (CMA and Mike Cragg) .

Too many times the StJ's Administration accepted sizzle rather than substance by hiring
Roberts (with no prior D1 head coaching experience,
Lavin (who had at best been out of coaching for 7 season), and
Mullin (who had no coaching experience).

Being the head coach in the Big East is not a learn as you go position.

Keep hope alive.
.
 
[quote="RedStormNC" post=385861]Maybe give Mullin credit for 3.. Ponds, Lovett and don't forget Sid Wilson.

Yakwe & Freudenberg within 110 on 247.

Lol.[/quote]

Mullin didn’t sign him. Matt did ;)
 
[quote="Enright" post=385863]Based on the one season he has been at SJU and the recruiting ratings of Lavin, Mullin and Anderson it is evident Anderson wins more with less and for anyone who watched SJU over the last decade I think most would agree his team played harder than the prior two coaches teams.[/quote]

This is the key to it all. Winning will attract better kids, and if you have a coach who won't suck right out of the gate like widely expected, plays a fun style, and is all about a family atmosphere, better kids will eventually come sooner rather than later.

But if they don't . . . at least we get to root for lower-rated players and a staff that bust their butts. Lack of effort when you are 20 and have college paid for just freaking kills me.
 
[quote="Moose" post=385868][quote="RedStormNC" post=385861]Maybe give Mullin credit for 3.. Ponds, Lovett and don't forget Sid Wilson.

Yakwe & Freudenberg within 110 on 247.

Lol.[/quote]

Mullin didn’t sign him. Matt did ;)[/quote]

Of course I was speaking about Mullin's staff in terms of recruiting. I don't want to open up the coaching debate again as it gets almost as bad as discussing politics.

Four big problems with Mullin's regime:

1) He wasn't an experienced coach. We all knew that going in and expecting otherwise was foolish. His development was slower than needed.


2) In terms of recruiting, he was just too honest to play the game that the great recruiters play. He wouldn't promise playing time, he wouldn't tell someone who wasn't an NBA prospect that he was going to be one and done, and he wasn't of the mindset to kiss up to a 17 or 18 year old who thinks a twitter account with 1500 followers makes him a star. Matt however was a very good hire. Slice wasn't, and duped Mullin (and us) to think he was the guy closing the deal on Kentucky's talent.

3) Loyalty to friends. Slice was a friend. Richmond is a friend. St. Jean was the son of his warrior's coach. Realistically only GSJ should have been on the staff, as the 3rd or 4th guy on the bench. Instead, with the Slice debacle was thrust into the 1.5 role, since Mullin let GSJ do an inordinate amount of coaching from bench. Richmond outwardly contributed little.

4) treated his players like NBA players. Bobby Knight has often spoken about how his job was to make sure each of his players was positioned on the floor and given roles to maximize their success and consequentially the team's. Mullin instructed players that they had better shoot when open. Just about any NBA player can hit a wide open 18 footer, but college players can't. He let his players get to mouthy to refs, evidenced by Pond's 6 or 7 T's. Maybe they were emulating their coach, who was too mouthy with refs.

Having said all that, even if Matt was the primary and secondary recruiter, we were able to construct a pretty good roster.

I hope CMA can construct a championship caliber roster quickly. We need top notch talent to compete in the Big East and on a national stage. He has done a credible job managing the first year roster he largely inherited, and this year's squad finished strongly, a credit to faith he placed in Earlington, Caraher, Dunn, Rutherford, etc. He did place a lot of faith in Roberts early, but by the time conference play was a few games underway, Roberts showed basically the same lack of readiness that he displayed freshman year. They were still 5-13 in conference and I would say that he did about as well with that talent as could be expected. I would think he's got to get us to 7-11 or 8-10 in the BE in year two, or the whispers will begin.
 
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[quote="Beast of the East" post=385877][quote="Moose" post=385868][quote="RedStormNC" post=385861]Maybe give Mullin credit for 3.. Ponds, Lovett and don't forget Sid Wilson.

Yakwe & Freudenberg within 110 on 247.

Lol.[/quote]

Mullin didn’t sign him. Matt did ;)[/quote]

Of course I was speaking about Mullin's staff in terms of recruiting. I don't want to open up the coaching debate again as it gets almost as bad as discussing politics.

Four big problems with Mullin's regime:

1) He wasn't an experienced coach. We all knew that going in and expecting otherwise was foolish. His development was slower than needed.


2) In terms of recruiting, he was just too honest to play the game that the great recruiters play. He wouldn't promise playing time, he wouldn't tell someone who wasn't an NBA prospect that he was going to be one and done, and he wasn't of the mindset to kiss up to a 17 or 18 year old who thinks a twitter account with 1500 followers makes him a star. Matt however was a very good hire. Slice wasn't, and duped Mullin (and us) to think he was the guy closing the deal on Kentucky's talent.

3) Loyalty to friends. Slice was a friend. Richmond is a friend. St. Jean was the son of his warrior's coach. Realistically only GSJ should have been on the staff, as the 3rd or 4th guy on the bench. Instead, with the Slice debacle was thrust into the 1.5 role, since Mullin let GSJ do an inordinate amount of coaching from bench. Richmond outwardly contributed little.

4) treated his players like NBA players. Bobby Knight has often spoken about how his job was to make sure each of his players was positioned on the floor and given roles to maximize their success and consequentially the team's. Mullin instructed players that they had better shoot when open. Just about any NBA player can hit a wide open 18 footer, but college players can't. He let his players get to mouthy to refs, evidenced by Pond's 6 or 7 T's. Maybe they were emulating their coach, who was too mouthy with refs.

Having said all that, even if Matt was the primary and secondary recruiter, we were able to construct a pretty good roster.

I hope CMA can construct a championship caliber roster quickly. We need top notch talent to compete in the Big East and on a national stage. He has done a credible job constructing a first year roster, and this year's squad finished strongly, a credit to faith he placed in Earlington, Caraher, Dunn, Rutherford, etc. They were still 5-13 in conference, and I would think he's got to get us to 7-11 or 8-10 in the BE in year two, or the whispers will begin.[/quote]

Well said Beast. I honestly don’t even think Anderson needs 5-star type guys. He showed how we can perform even without the big time talent last season. We added enough this year to be even more than marginally better. I hope Anderson keeps up the trend of improving recruiting yearly. We have a deep roster this season and the 21 class is going to tell us a lot in terms of our trajectory talent-wise. Need a good class to continue taking steps forward. I have zero question Anderson can coach after last season. He did a ton with a marginal roster and our extremely
Low-key and unexciting additions of guys like Rutherford, Dunn and even Champagnie ended up being masterful additions. It tells me this staff is good at scouting and recognizing talent which is even more important than just landing highly ranked kids. Exciting to see what next 2 classes hold for us but I don’t see us going anywhere but up at this point because Anderson’s career is best described as consistently good. Something SJU has not had.
 
Macon and DeMeo have excellent reputations as quality recruiters
Plus they have long term local ties that should benefit us
I would expect that we will recruit reasonably well as long as this staff remains intact
 
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[quote="MarkRedman" post=385881]Macon and DeMeo have excellent reputations as quality recruiters
Plus they have long term local ties that should benefit us
I would expect that we will recruit reasonably well as long as this staff remains intact[/quote]

Honestly, this is the most money we've paid a staff, even with what we paid Lavin and Mullin, and reasonably good is not good enough. For this to be successful, we've got to create a program always in contention for first place in the Big East, and a perennial finished in the top half of the division, not just one bid every 3 or 4 years.

Honestly, Lavin's tenure, although not the success we had hoped for, resurrected this program from mid-major type of status. He didn't recruit enough, but the guys he did recruit included two NBA players, and some that were very good college players (Harrison definitely). Mullin's staff brought in Ponds and Lovett, got Simon, Heron and Clark to transfer, and found a pretty good sleeper in LJ.

Neither staff recruited well enough to put us in elite Big East status. Anderson has to know down some big recruits in the next cycle and the one after that. Being a good coach isn't good enough in college basketball. You've got to bring in major talent to be an elite program. We aren't going to be a Duke or Kentucky or UNC, but perhaps we can be in the next group of schools. That should be the goal.
 
[quote="Beast of the East" post=385888]

Honestly, this is the most money we've paid a staff, even with what we paid Lavin and Mullin,[/quote] . . . and slice? ;)
 
[quote="JO23" post=385860]From 2011-2018, St. John’s was able to land 9 top 100 recruits. Lavin signed 7 of them, while Mullin landed 2. In those 8 seasons, St. John’s went 130-133 (54-90). At the same time, at Arkansas, Anderson braught in 7 Top 100 guys. He went 169-102 (78-64).

In college basketball, great coaching is more important than top recruits every single time. Teams like Butler, Creighton, Providence and Seton Hall have not been recruiting better talent than us, they’ve just been out coaching us year in and year out. They have systems, they recruit for those systems, and sprinkle in Top 100 guys when they could.

That’s why I love the Mike Anderson hire so much, because hes a winner, hes on par, if not better than Cooley, McDermott and Willard. Anderson gives the team an identity with his 40 minutes of hell system. He’ll land some Top 100 guys here and there, but more importantly he’ll get guys that fit the identity of the program and want to win. The team had no system or identity under Mullin, didn’t matter who we recruited.[/quote]

Disagree, JO23. Mullin had a system. It just didn't work with college teams where one starter or more could not be counted on to hit their highest percentage shot.
 
I didn’t see Rysheed Jordan’s name as a Lavin recruit of high ranking . Just saying . He had a disappointing and short career here but , was a big talent . As far as Coach Anderson , he has a style that has been successful elsewhere but , never to the top of the Leagues his Teams were in . Good Records but , no Championships . He seemingly has a good idea of what type of players will fit in his system and recruits accordingly. Herron might have been a good fit but , he was injured most of the season . Candidly , while I like Figgy , I don’t think he fits in CMA’s style ., Rutherford is the type of Player that CMA likes . Only trouble is he was a poor shooter and finisher . He was a demon on defense and a good ball stealer . Fun to watch , except for all the missed bunnies . Heady too. We’ll see how the Recruiting goes this and next year . And , what are CMA’s Goals ? Make us a 4 -5 th place BE Team or a Contender ? We have been so conditioned to accept Mediocre results vs Bad Results but , is that the Bar to set ? Mediocrity ? I hope not .
 
[quote="SLYFOXX1968" post=385905]I didn’t see Rysheed Jordan’s name as a Lavin recruit of high ranking . Just saying . He had a disappointing and short career here but , was a big talent . As far as Coach Anderson , he has a style that has been successful elsewhere but , never to the top of the Leagues his Teams were in . Good Records but , no Championships . He seemingly has a good idea of what type of players will fit in his system and recruits accordingly. Herron might have been a good fit but , he was injured most of the season . Candidly , while I like Figgy , I don’t think he fits in CMA’s style ., Rutherford is the type of Player that CMA likes . Only trouble is he was a poor shooter and finisher . He was a demon on defense and a good ball stealer . Fun to watch , except for all the missed bunnies . Heady too. We’ll see how the Recruiting goes this and next year . And , what are CMA’s Goals ? Make us a 4 -5 th place BE Team or a Contender ? We have been so conditioned to accept Mediocre results vs Bad Results but , is that the Bar to set ? Mediocrity ? I hope not .[/quote]

Anderson will hit 400 wins soon with half as many losses and lots of tourney appearances. I don’t see mediocre. I think he certainly needs more talent to get to the next level but he seems hungry. I see guys like Posh as a perfect type of Anderson recruit. Tough, fast, durable, excellent athlete who will play hard at both ends. Look forward to those types of kids every time. It’s early but I think he will be real good for us.
 
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