SJU Portal Targets

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Redenbacher said:
“We kind of lost this season with the way we recruited.”
“We recruited the antithesis of the way I coach."

Rick Pitino, February 2024
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“It’s not the job,” he said. “You could be at Missouri and recruit slow players. Believe me, it’s not St. John’s. We had to put together a team at the last second. We will never, ever, do that again.”

“I tried to get AJ Storr, I tried to get others,” Pitino said. “There were circumstances that had to be done over, that were out of my control. We had to bite the bullet and clean certain things out, academically as well as athletically. It’s what had to be done to start over.”
 
dk423 said:
“It’s not the job,” he said. “You could be at Missouri and recruit slow players. Believe me, it’s not St. John’s. We had to put together a team at the last second. We will never, ever, do that again.”

“I tried to get AJ Storr, I tried to get others,” Pitino said. “There were circumstances that had to be done over, that were out of my control. We had to bite the bullet and clean certain things out, academically as well as athletically. It’s what had to be done to start over.”
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Yeah, Pitino deserves a pass on year one. Different story now and of course he knows that.
 
Marillac2 said:
Fine according to who? Pitino complained about the roster all season.

I expect this roster to be waaaaaay better.

If we have anything close to last year then it has been a complete and utter failure. There are plenty of valid excuses year one..getting NIL in line, filling so many spots, recalibrating recruitment to high major players, learning the unique challenges St. John’s offers, etc. There are far fewer excuses now.
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Me too. Yes, Pitino complained about the roster AND criticized himself when he said he should have looked a little closer at some of the player qualities. However, we still have some good players on this Roster. Last year at this time we had ONE. I fully expect the Roster to be better. However, he still gets the benefit of the doubt with so many options still available.
 
I think the worry is that we all want/expect a big year 2 but Pitino is not some infallible god that will land every top target especially since we are still St. John's. The more we end up with consolation prizes the lower our ceiling becomes.

Last year the big fish was Walter Clayton. We missed out on him and ended up with the consolation prize of Jordan Dingle, who some thought was the better player anyway. Well, if we had Clayton instead I think we end up a 5 or 6 seed at worst. That's just one player.

Same with the Cliff stuff. By all accounts, it was us who have been in Cliff's ear for months and nudged him into the portal with the idea it would be a fairly open and shut case. Now it appears that his recruitment may be more open than originally anticipated and the staff is again entertaining consolation prizes on that front.

Amari Williams and Christ Essandoko are good players. Not conceding anything on the Cliff front yet but the fear is that in mid March of next year we'll be wondering "What could have been if we just got Cliff instead of Essandoko" similar to Clayton/Dingle of this season.
 
Amari Williams is a really good player. He's a top 25 portal player in virtually every ranking list I've seen. Has great size at 6'10 265 pounds. He's a two-time CAA Defensive Player of the Year and his final four is us, Creighton, Florida, Indiana. Pretty good schools. I want Cliff like everyone else, but Williams is no slouch and would be a great get.
 
mattc said:
Amari Williams is a really good player. He's a top 25 portal player in virtually every ranking list I've seen. Has great size at 6'10 265 pounds. He's a two-time CAA Defensive Player of the Year and his final four is us, Creighton, Florida, Indiana. Pretty good schools. I want Cliff like everyone else, but Williams is no slouch and would be a great get.
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Just impossible for anyone on this board to know the trade-offs. Is Amari 80% the player of Cliff but at a 90% cheaper price? Does Amari's playing time requirement (he only played 22mpg last year) enable us to add more guys that the staff wants?
 
dk423 said:
Just impossible for anyone on this board to know the trade-offs. Is Amari 80% the player of Cliff but at a 90% cheaper price? Does Amari's playing time requirement (he only played 22mpg last year) enable us to add more guys that the staff wants?
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Am sure Pitino & staff go through that exercise from cost/benefit analysis in the “war room” every day.
 
mattc said:
Amari Williams is a really good player. He's a top 25 portal player in virtually every ranking list I've seen. Has great size at 6'10 265 pounds. He's a two-time CAA Defensive Player of the Year and his final four is us, Creighton, Florida, Indiana. Pretty good schools. I want Cliff like everyone else, but Williams is no slouch and would be a great get.
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Yep. Very similar to the Dingle comments after we missed Clayton.

The difference is we know exactly what we are getting with Cliff. Cliff has done it for years at this level and is as elite as it gets on the defensive end. You know you won't be disappointed with Cliff.

Amari is coming from a lower level. Can never be sure how that's going to translate. There are some guys like Dalton Knecht that absolutely crush it and there are others like Nick Timberlake who can't make the leap. That's accentuated even more with bigs.
 
Trilly, re: Christ (responding to Friar fans):

"I've asked about young Christ and haven't gotten an answer yet - which usually means it's on the right track lol.
FWIW, I know St. John's is out on him."
 
Beasts of the East said:
Unless an NIL cap is implemented, the pool of programs capable of winning a national championship will continue to shrink.

Except for a very small number of college athletes, NIL recipients bring negative ROI to businesses that engage them. Unlike a pro sports team owners, NIL donors do not have a profit incentive, only the satisfaction of helping their favorite college team be competitive.

The numbers of so staggering it's hard for our fans to really consider what it takes to be competitive NIL. Rick came up with am idea of a 100 man team of donors each contributing $10,000. I'm pretty sure we don't have 100 individuals willing to donate that much on top of donations to the university. Even then, that's only $1 million, and very quickly top programs are ratcheting up budgets past $3 million to $5 million. How long before that becomes $7-10 million?

Like small market pro sports teams, it is difficult to sustain success. In college, commitments are only 1 year, which makes it far more difficult than mlb which has a wait period to enter free agency, and multi year contracts to keep budgets manageable. Here, a.mid major stat emerges and he has to leave for major NIL income.

The NCAA must get ahead of this by implementing meaningful change, but i seriously doubt they will.
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wouldn't a cap just put the money back under the table? what would stop a team that has 100,000 left in cap to give that to a player then give another 100 off the books. Seems that's going back to what it used to be.
 
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