I hope I properly copied Vaccaro's article - do not know how to attach a link
some of the copy might be "messed up":
Good times are ahead for all in the SJU family.
It’s desperately time for St. John’s to be great again
By Mike Vaccaro
March 8, 2018 | 5:25pm
It’s desperately time for St. John’s to be great again
Chris Mullin Paul J. Bereswill
Mike Vaccaro
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The second half was a clinic, the team with Final Four aspirations finally shaking free from the team hoping to eke its way into the NIT. There are a lot of differences between Xavier and St. John’s right now, and every one of them were on display across the final 20 minutes at Madison Square Garden.
Not even a feisty Johnnies-leaning crowd could help them this time, not after the first few possessions following halftime, a four-point lead growing to 10, then 15, then 20, the Musketeers having their way, easing to an 88-60 win over a Johnnies team that, by the end, playing on about 15 hours’ rest, had seen their knees turn to jelly and their season, at last, turn to ash.
“That’s what you get,” Chris Mullin said, “for coming in ninth.”
That second-half schooling doesn’t have to be wasted, though. What Xavier has shown is what Villanova has proven time and again these past few years: if the Big East isn’t the all-powerful monolith it was in its infancy, it remains a league where you can reach a rarefied place in college basketball.
There is every reason to believe that half of the No. 1 seeds that will be distributed on Sunday will go to the Big East, the lone basketball-only member of the NCAA’s Power 6. And it isn’t just the league: Villanova and Xavier are mirror images of St. John’s, Catholic schools in major cities that have figured out not only how to win, not only how to climb to the sport’s highest level, but how to stay there.
“They’re a tough team to play against under any conditions,” Mullin said of the Musketeers, now 28-4 on the season. “They just are a really good team through and through.”
Modal TriggerIf Xavier and Villanova can reach college basketball’s upper echelon, St. John’s should be able to as well.Getty Images
They’re a tough team in other ways, too, because if Xavier can reach this level, if Villanova can, there is no good reason St. John’s can’t, either. Yet next year will mark the 20th anniversary since the Johnnies’ last legitimate push toward the sport’s upper realm, the ’98-99 team that fell three points shy of the Final Four in Mike Jarvis’ first year.
Twenty years, gone in an eyeblink.
Next year will be Mullin’s fourth coaching his alma mater. The first three have shown incremental improvements, and this season might well have gone awfully different if Marcus LoVett had made it out of December unscathed. But he didn’t. The record was 16-17. It’s 38-60 for three years. Mullin was always going to get the benefit of the doubt at the campus where he’ll always have favored-son status, and he’s gotten it. And this year’s team did have its moments.
But at some point, and soon, there has to be a surge into the upper half of the Big East, still a league where if you can just sniff 20 wins, you’re almost certain to have a ticket punched to the NCAAs. At some point, there have to be more than flashes and snippets, and your best wins have to stop being called “improbable” and simply have to be part of the plan.
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Everything would seem to be in place for next year. Four-fifths of the overworked starting lineup will be back (assuming Shamorie Ponds will return after testing his NBA draft stock). As many as four impactful newcomers — two transfers (notably 6-9 Sedee Keita) and two freshmen (notably Greg Williams out of Lafayette, La.) ought to make it Mullin’s deepest team to date.
“Believe it or not, I really haven’t looked that far ahead yet,” Mullin said, which is, of course, impossible to believe. Mullin may have more job security than any coach with a .388 career winning percentage has ever had, but he didn’t become the iconic player he became without a fire burning inside him to succeed, and to win.
You could see how January wore on him, and you could see how February revitalized him, and you can see how there are seeds in place for this program to go where it needs to go, to someday stand astride Xavier and Villanova. If it can happen in Cincinnati, if it can happen in Philadelphia, of course it can happen here.
More to the point, given where those two have set the bar, it should happen here.
