St. John’s (2020-21)

[quote="Dan V" post=400482]What has UConn shown that has people thinking they are going to win immediately in the Big East? Top to bottom they always had the most talent in the American, except last year with Memphis. Hurley has no excuses he had a roster full of 4 star recruits every year he’s been there. I’m not buying it this year they have a lot to prove imo. Big East is pretty stacked this year top to bottom, going to be a dog fight every game. Our guys already know what it’s like, these UConn cats haven’t been through that yet. Even Hurley hasn’t although the American does have some really good coaches.[/quote]

Didn't you know that we're talking UConn. Really nothing in the American, but now that they're back in b.e. a switch will be put on, and it will be like they never missed a beat.
 
I will say that UConn is a big team and is deep, but part of their depth is that they have like 7 or so 4/5’s who can only do so much damage because what aren’t on the court together mostly and are rarely the big scorers: they have some very good player 1-3 spots but aren’t very deep there overall. They underachieved in the American, but they will be boosted by the new league a bit: that said, I don’t think they have a huge advantage over us except for depth of bigs, a little size and Bouknight who is excellent: he’s excellent but not yet consistent. I won’t concede to them. We are as deep,
If not as talented at the top, but Mike Anderson is a better coach and I think we give them trouble.
 
[quote="MCNPA" post=400490]I will say that UConn is a big team and is deep, but part of their depth is that they have like 7 or so 4/5’s who can only do so much damage because what aren’t on the court together mostly and are rarely the big scorers: they have some very good player 1-3 spots but aren’t very deep there overall. They underachieved in the American, but they will be boosted by the new league a bit: that said, I don’t think they have a huge advantage over us except for depth of bigs, a little size and Bouknight who is excellent: he’s excellent but not yet consistent. I won’t concede to them. We are as deep,
If not as talented at the top, but Mike Anderson is a better coach and I think we give them trouble.[/quote]

I think we will finish 7th and they will finish 8th.
 
We saw the Duke make a huge jump last year, do you think we see someone make that kind of improvement this year and if so who? I'm thinking a healthy Greg Williams getting consistent minutes is the guy. Thoughts?
 
I truly believe in fit. Having the right fit keeps the flame of rivalries going (SJ/Nova/GTown), makes it much easier regionally to have fans travel to away games (instead of the south now they can drive a few hours or so), and I think it just rejuvinates programs. Kind of like turning over a new page. That can't be proven obviously, but I sense it. Pitt was an amazing program I remember always being around top 10 nationally while here. They are mostly irrelevant now since the ACC move in hoops. Cuse has fared a bit better, but they are clearly losing prestige since they moved. Their hoops is still solid, but it's not blue blood level anymore and not all over the national scene like they were here.

So while it may not make logical sense to have UConn struggle in AAC then do well here, I just feel it coming. I think their Calhoun days of being a dominant blue blood are over. But I think UConn will eventually be a top 25 team regularly once settled here. Don't think they win rings though. Law of averages would make it nearly impossible to keep performing at the level they did under Calhoun and most schools get that 1 amazing coach in their history. Theirs was Calhoun and he's gone. Hurley should be good if not very good. But doubt great. Adding UConn adds to the rivalries and hype while also giving us another top notch nationally known brand. If they are ranked, I see that as 2 more chances to beat a ranked team than we would've had without them.
 
[quote="Anthony Mattia" post=400501]We saw the Duke make a huge jump last year, do you think we see someone make that kind of improvement this year and if so who? I'm thinking a healthy Greg Williams getting consistent minutes is the guy. Thoughts?[/quote]

I think most guys got enough minutes last year that you know what to expect from them this year. I think the surprises will come from the newbies: Cole, moore, posh, mcgriff etc.
 
I think UConn will be better than us this year because of the talent gap and they have an elite, All-American type player. I'm extremely high on Bouknight. Maybe too high. I didn't see one player on the BE pre-season 1st team who I thought was better than him and I think it's close between him and Zegarowski. for POY. Bouknight's probably an NBA lottery pick by the end of the season. So I'm excited to see that we get first crack at them and I do think we can surprise them because we'll play scrappy team defense but I don't know that we have one defender who can lockdown Bouknight. A couple of seasons ago he's the type of guy we'd give to Justin Simon but I don't think that guy exists for us right now so it will either take an off night from him or a great defensive plan from the staff. It should be a really fun way to kick off conference play.
 
My god, how good will it feel to demolish UConn in their first welcome back to the Big East on their court? I know it probably won't happen and I'll take any W...but would be up there with pounding Cuse at the Carrier Dome with their fans in utter shock.
 
[quote="QueensBall" post=400512]I think UConn will be better than us this year because of the talent gap and they have an elite, All-American type player. I'm extremely high on Bouknight. Maybe too high. I didn't see one player on the BE pre-season 1st team who I thought was better than him and I think it's close between him and Zegarowski. for POY. Bouknight's probably an NBA lottery pick by the end of the season. So I'm excited to see that we get first crack at them and I do think we can surprise them because we'll play scrappy team defense but I don't know that we have one defender who can lockdown Bouknight. A couple of seasons ago he's the type of guy we'd give to Justin Simon but I don't think that guy exists for us right now so it will either take an off night from him or a great defensive plan from the staff. It should be a really fun way to kick off conference play.[/quote]

Georgetown had Allen Iverson, Othella Harrington, Jerome Williams and Don Reid (Reid was drafted on '95, while the former three were '96 draftees, of course, Iverson the #1 overall pick in '96) on the same team, and the Johnnies split with them in back-to-back seasons. Those were good Hoya teams and mediocre-to-bad St. John's teams.

There's a thing also called team defense. Albeit, Bouknight seems to be a top 15 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, there's a such thing of team play that can negate, minimize, or overcome such a player.
 
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[quote="MJDinkins" post=400540][quote="QueensBall" post=400512]I think UConn will be better than us this year because of the talent gap and they have an elite, All-American type player. I'm extremely high on Bouknight. Maybe too high. I didn't see one player on the BE pre-season 1st team who I thought was better than him and I think it's close between him and Zegarowski. for POY. Bouknight's probably an NBA lottery pick by the end of the season. So I'm excited to see that we get first crack at them and I do think we can surprise them because we'll play scrappy team defense but I don't know that we have one defender who can lockdown Bouknight. A couple of seasons ago he's the type of guy we'd give to Justin Simon but I don't think that guy exists for us right now so it will either take an off night from him or a great defensive plan from the staff. It should be a really fun way to kick off conference play.[/quote]

Georgetown had Allen Iverson, Othella Harrington, Jerome Williams and Don Reid (Reid was drafted on '95, while the former three were '96 draftees, of course, Iverson the #1 overall pick in '96) on the same team, and the Johnnies split with them in back-to-back seasons. Those were good Hoya teams and mediocre-to-bad St. John's teams.

There's a thing also called team defense. Albeit, Bouknight seems to be a top 15 pick in the 2021 NBA Draft, there's a such thing of team play that can negate, minimize, or overcome such a player.[/quote]

Of course. I'm certainly not counting us out and I really trust Anderson as a coach. I was very impressed by the way he had the team playing defense last season and I have no reason to think that won't continue. I'm just saying that star players are stars for a reason and I know I usually feel better going into the game when my team has the best guy on the floor. Absolutely if we're playing A+ team defense for 40 minutes we probably win the game. I'm not trying to be overly pessimistic, I'm just saying there's a reason why I think we'll finish 6th or 7th and they'll finish 3rd or 4th. Didn't mean to imply it was an impossible task. I'll take the Bouknight-envy down a notch. He's not Superman.
 
Looking back at last we started making home court tough for the visiting team. We won 3of our last 4 at home and lost to x by 3.
We had the lead at msg vs. Creighton at halftime when it was called.
I'd love a 8-2 this year at home, and I'd take a 4-6 road record on the road. 12-8 in the b.e. 7-0 in ooc would be 19-8. Just to point out butler at 10-8 was 5th in the b.e. win Thursday and msg would insane that Friday in the b.e. tourny.tournament.

Make that winning 4 of their last 5 at home including g-town in the b.e. tourny.
 
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Seems like most are penciling us in with a win AT Texas Tech who have a lot of talent, a very good coach and are pre season nationally ranked. That seems pretty optimistic to me.
 
[quote="bamafan" post=400656]Seems like most are penciling us in with a win AT Texas Tech who have a lot of talent, a very good coach and are pre season nationally ranked. That seems pretty optimistic to me.[/quote]

We beat wvu and Arizona last year, we're a good ooc team. They started to dominate at home at the end of last season. They were beating Creighton at halftime at msg then it got canceled, maybe they could have won that game, get confidence from that game and won Friday and get to the b e championship. You get there and anything is possibly, when your confidence is sky high, you could win it, and get to the ncaa tournament.

They'd be looked at much more highly than they are now. But, the creighton was canceled and the rest is history. Everyone thing we're still garbage.
Only one thing to do this year, don't talk bs to the other teams, do it on the court.
I know I'd be pissed that they canceled last season, believing that we were on the verge of doing something special
 
[quote="bamafan" post=400656]Seems like most are penciling us in with a win AT Texas Tech who have a lot of talent, a very good coach and are pre season nationally ranked. That seems pretty optimistic to me.[/quote]

Would you please stop with the rational thinking, you're really reeking havoc with our delusional fan base.
 
In hindsight, more of us should have been predicting a win over Arizona. I don't think teams with multiple freshman starters relatively early in their college careers will tend to mix well with our style, even if they were high school studs. I'm actually all for traveling to play teams that fit that profile as long as CMA is here.

(I just wouldn't necessarily want a rematch come tournament time.)
 
[quote="Monte" post=400658][quote="bamafan" post=400656]Seems like most are penciling us in with a win AT Texas Tech who have a lot of talent, a very good coach and are pre season nationally ranked. That seems pretty optimistic to me.[/quote]

Would you please stop with the rational thinking, you're really reeking havoc with our delusional fan base.[/quote]
Not saying it's impossible just not likely. To pencil it in as a win is what I find unrealistic.
 
[quote="bamafan" post=400661][quote="Monte" post=400658][quote="bamafan" post=400656]Seems like most are penciling us in with a win AT Texas Tech who have a lot of talent, a very good coach and are pre season nationally ranked. That seems pretty optimistic to me.[/quote]

Would you please stop with the rational thinking, you're really reeking havoc with our delusional fan base.[/quote]
Not saying it's impossible just not likely. To pencil it in as a win is what I find unrealistic.[/quote]

Let's be realistic. The player described as "our best player by far" is not considered by coaches to be one of the top ten players in the league pre-season. I'd love to be pleasantly surprised, but let's just be reasonable and say the most likely positive outcome of the OOC schedule would be 6-1. If we stumble and lose one of the other winnable games, 5-2 with a tough 20 game BE schedule won't leave much room for error in terms of the possibility of an NIT or NCAA post-season. For us this season, the OOC is critical to our chances for the postseason in that 5 games above .500 (6-1) would give us a fair chance to moderately improve (to 8-12 in conference from 5-13) and still finish above .500 overall. I like what CMA has achieved so far, so I will lean towards 6-1. 7-0 would be a great start, but at this point there are just a lot of question marks, even with a much deeper team.

Last season not counting the BET, 42% of our games were OOC. 11-2 OOC enabled us to finish above .500 at 16-15. This season, only 26% of our games are OOC. We will need to do very well OOC and much better in conference to have a similar record as last year. Won't be easy, but its doable.
 
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[quote="Beast of the East" post=400671]The player described as "our best player by far"[/quote]

Who is that?

Anderson has said that his teams play better second half of season. You could argue that is true for all teams but I think in this case it has to do with conditioning for one thing and the complicated nature of playing a lot of players instead of just a core of 5 or 6. Plus we are integrating a lot of new players and possibly the starting PG is a freshman. I think a lot of things would have to fall our way to have early success. Not impossible but it sounds like both Roberts and Cole may be a bit behind due to health issues.
 
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