IN Louies era he pretty much had the pick of local kids, teams out West were not much of a threat Today we have the internet and twitter. It is hard for a good player today to go under the radar He did not have to travel Budgets for schools are much larger Therefore ,quality Ass't can be brought on board .Facilities have grown with state of the art equipment ect ect Totally a diff world one in which Lavin excels
What did Looie have that his successors didn't?
- Thread starter Ray Morgan
- Start date
ernie lorch/riverside church. another poster mentioned lorch. I sat at alumni hall for over 20 years, one row below ernie & his 10 seats. at msg, ernie sat close to court side. ernie was there at ah for 99% of the games. he would always bring 6 to 9 high school players with him. ernie & his staff would basically recruit for sju. they would find the best players. rutledge would always come by & legally say a few words to ernie's guests. ernie identified the players sju should go after. I always asked ernie about recruiting. he would tell me the names of his guests. he would only state to me if a recruit had committed.
There is a misconception that Louie cleaned up on the recruiting trail. He didn't, especially later in his career.
With a Final Four behind him, a budding All-Star in Chris Mullin, the NBA rookie of the year for the Knicks in Mark Jackson, you would think Louie would have the recruiting winds at his back in the late 80s.
Yet at a time when NYC was bursting with talent, we corralled only two McD's AA - Sealy and Werdann and both in the same year.
We either missed or didn't get sniff from:
Jamal Mashburn - Hayes - Kentucky - 1st Team AA
Kenny Anderson - Molloy - GTech - 1st Team AA
Derrick Phelps - CTK - UNC - National Champion
Brian Reese - Tolentine - UNC - National Champion
Khalid Reeves - CTK - 2nd Team AA
Conrad McRae - Bklyn Tech - Cuse - All BE
Adrian Autry - Tolentine - Cuse - All BE
Instead we got second tier NY players some who had good careers like Jayson Williams,, Billy Singleton, David Cain and Shawnelle Scott, some who were marginal talents: Carl Beckett, Lamont Middleton and Derek Brown and some who were not Big East material: Terrence Mullin, Lee Green, Kevin Fitzpatrick, Darrell Aiken
Louie's style of play and hesitation to give frosh major minutes was a huge turnoff.
Couple that with recruiting blunders like Gary Payton and Chucky Sproling and Louie would have been run out of town on redmen.com.
With a Final Four behind him, a budding All-Star in Chris Mullin, the NBA rookie of the year for the Knicks in Mark Jackson, you would think Louie would have the recruiting winds at his back in the late 80s.
Yet at a time when NYC was bursting with talent, we corralled only two McD's AA - Sealy and Werdann and both in the same year.
We either missed or didn't get sniff from:
Jamal Mashburn - Hayes - Kentucky - 1st Team AA
Kenny Anderson - Molloy - GTech - 1st Team AA
Derrick Phelps - CTK - UNC - National Champion
Brian Reese - Tolentine - UNC - National Champion
Khalid Reeves - CTK - 2nd Team AA
Conrad McRae - Bklyn Tech - Cuse - All BE
Adrian Autry - Tolentine - Cuse - All BE
Instead we got second tier NY players some who had good careers like Jayson Williams,, Billy Singleton, David Cain and Shawnelle Scott, some who were marginal talents: Carl Beckett, Lamont Middleton and Derek Brown and some who were not Big East material: Terrence Mullin, Lee Green, Kevin Fitzpatrick, Darrell Aiken
Louie's style of play and hesitation to give frosh major minutes was a huge turnoff.
Couple that with recruiting blunders like Gary Payton and Chucky Sproling and Louie would have been run out of town on redmen.com.
No one says Looie cleaned up on the recruiting trail. One of his assistants in the 80s told me Looie mandated we sign one potential first round draft pick a year. He didn't push for more. Imagine if he decided to honor Gary Payton's LOI. Thankfully, back then, players stayed four years. That enabled us to maintain a high level of mediocrity. We haven't had a coach go after number one picks since Jarvis left, unless you count the lame efforts of Roberts/Rutledge. Looie was helped by the Big East in the early years when we were among the giants in the country. The stipend was also extremely helpful. It's something we can still legally use. One problem is NYC players overall aren't nearly as good as they used to be. If we just recruit locally, we'd be another Manhattan College. There's not enough talent, and the better ones want to go away.
To the poster who gave Rutledge all the kudos, It wasn't him who brought in the players, it was Looie. That's like saying Norm Roberts is responsible for Kansas' success on the recruiting trail. It's Bill Self. Roberts has a cake job as did Rutledge all those years. Let's not rewrite history.
When Lavin came in, I thought there'd be a culture change from the lazy good ole boys culture in the athletic department. There was, at the beginning. Then Lavin realized he could get away with any level of mediocrity as long as his gift of gab enabled him to take on the air side jobs where he's a great face for our program. That's great, except when he's pontificating, he's not recruiting.
To the poster who gave Rutledge all the kudos, It wasn't him who brought in the players, it was Looie. That's like saying Norm Roberts is responsible for Kansas' success on the recruiting trail. It's Bill Self. Roberts has a cake job as did Rutledge all those years. Let's not rewrite history.
When Lavin came in, I thought there'd be a culture change from the lazy good ole boys culture in the athletic department. There was, at the beginning. Then Lavin realized he could get away with any level of mediocrity as long as his gift of gab enabled him to take on the air side jobs where he's a great face for our program. That's great, except when he's pontificating, he's not recruiting.
Bottom line, the circumstances were different, but for all his faults, Looie was better at his job than any of his predecessors.
You can say he had better relationships with the local programs, had a key recruiter in Rutledge, made good use of the Stipend, but all that means is he took advantage of the things he had at his disposal. Let's not forget he had plenty going against him as well, the lack of dorms, small on campus arena, the city was a sh*thole for a good part of the 80s, the school was still run like a mom and pop shop when he was competing against the UNCs and UKs etc
It's not like he had a golden ticket, but he used what he had to his advantage and minimized what he didn't. The circumstances are different now. SJU has different pluses and minuses. But the bottom line is Looie was just better at it. Not perfect, but all considered he was pretty damn good at being a college basketball coach.
You can say he had better relationships with the local programs, had a key recruiter in Rutledge, made good use of the Stipend, but all that means is he took advantage of the things he had at his disposal. Let's not forget he had plenty going against him as well, the lack of dorms, small on campus arena, the city was a sh*thole for a good part of the 80s, the school was still run like a mom and pop shop when he was competing against the UNCs and UKs etc
It's not like he had a golden ticket, but he used what he had to his advantage and minimized what he didn't. The circumstances are different now. SJU has different pluses and minuses. But the bottom line is Looie was just better at it. Not perfect, but all considered he was pretty damn good at being a college basketball coach.
Rutledge was not an assistant under Roberts ("Roberts/Rutledge"). Rutledge had a lot of the contacts and made the initial connections and follow-ups. Coach C. also followed-up and was the closer. As mentioned he missed out on guys, but unlike someone else posted, wanting to leave New York to play elsewhere is definitely not a new and has been going on since Frank McGuire started the reverse "Underground Railroad". Thing was Coach C. was able to keep some of the big guys home, get others who were just below top notch to come as mentioned and form good competitive teams. He also got a few big ones who got away to come back home via transfer from other four year schools (Carter, Rencher, Redding which didn't work out, and while not as highly regarded as a recruit even though he went to UNC, Brust) or JUCO (Berry, Goodwin and Harvey). When was the last time we got an impact transfer from another four year school?
beast of the east
Active member
I'd like to see a study of the concentration of college talent back in Carnesecca's days, pre conference. The NBA draft may be one indicator. Before cable TV exposure, and before major conferences, I'm going to guess that there weren't as many programs that could compete for the best players, and without TV conference money, many D1 schools just couldn't afford to recruit nationally. Even the cost of a phone call long distance was a considerable expense (could be $2 a minute in those monopoly days). I'm going to guess when Carnesecca recruited only the metro area, there wasn't as many schools vying for the top players in the area. But it's only conjecture.
Wow that's a great point about the long distance calls. It got me thinking as well. In the 70's and 80's, how did you even find out about big names recruits across the country? Sure, if some were in your backyard you'd be sure to hear about them from word of mouth. But with no internet and no large scale media, how was it done?
I don't know. I think it's true that the midmajors weren't as much a factor, but the big schools still had donors that let coaches call and fly to NY.
Plenty of NY kids were recruited out from under us from Kareem to Bernie King to Stephon. I think coaches didn't fly to Bodunk, Iowa unless they were from the midwest. But coaches from all the big schools called the NYC kids, don't you think?
It's not like Looie was competing on a level playing field with Dean Smith or Wooden. He just made the most of what he had.
jumbo_peanuts
Active member
While it may not be totally on topic of this discussion, I think the biggest reason for our lack of consistent success is the belief that NYC is still a hot bed for college basketball talent. Many of the coaches have put too much emphasis on the need to land local kids and get them to stay home. But in my opinion, NYC players aren't what they used to be. In the class of 2014, there are only 5 players in the top 100 that are from NYC and the surrounding areas. What did Norm say during his first press conference after being introduced as our HC (and Norm wasn't the only one who thought this way)? It was something along the lines of "I guarantee that there will not be a local kid that will be able to say that St Johns didn't work their butt off to recruit them." It was like all of our coaches before Lavin had the mindset that there were NYC players, and then everyone else. I believe that Lavin understands that there is actually a basketball world outside of NYC, and that will lead to our consistent success.
beast of the east
Active member
I think there are a lot of factors regarding the expense of recruiting and the ability of smaller schools to compete nationally. I don't know how old you are, but it wasn't so long ago - maybe 25 years, that a NYC to LAX flight without a Saturday night stayover was about $1400. When I'd travel on business, you could buy 2 RT tix with a staurday night stay each originating on the opposite coast for about $400. Then you'd simply throw out the return flight on each ticket. There are dozens of reasons for sure. The cost of recruiting and gathering knowledge about HS players has come down, and the ability of more schools to spend more has gone up.
Coach C. wasn't originally looking at Payton but he and everyone else for that matter were looking at Payton's teammate, Greg Forster who wound up at UCLA. Payton only received two offers from D1 school, St. John's and Oregon State. While we did do most of our recruiting locally, we did go to the major camps which were all in the East back then, Five Star being the real big one at that time.
We did not do a lot of National recruiting, but again the players came East for camps and we would see them. Yes, we probably did have home visits of such. Sproiling became interested in St. John's watching Chris Mullin who he became a huge fan of. Don't know the Broadnax connection.
westchesterjoe
Active member
SUBWAY TOKENS ! All of the previous posts all contributed valuable insight into Louie's success..I'm not sure if it was mentioned but, St John's had a pedigree identity already established in College BB long before Louie took over. And, that's not a demerit for Louie but, Buck Freeman, Frank McGUIRE, Joe Lapchick were COACHING LEGENDS.
Back then, most high quality NYC HS players would come to St john's almost automatically. Why not? Our teams won a lot of games from the early days of College BB, RISING TO AS HIGH AS 4TH All Time in Wins. Our Coaches were honorable men who were great COACHES TOO.
Kareem likely would have come here if Lapchick wasn't forcibly retired. There is documentation to that effect. Had he played here for 3 years, our Program might have had 3-4 NCAA TITLES. bUT, HE DIDN'T.
Louie has a charismatic type personality, capable of capturing corporate executives or the Parents of a prime recruit. And, once they came here, they loved playing for him..He had a methodical type system, learned largely from Lapchick that players could quickly master and then repeat during games, at every interval. It was winning basketball , with good fundamentals and few mistakes.. Defense? Always man to man and hard nosed.
Of course, things have changed but, one thing I give Lavin credit for is he understands what the heritage of the Program once was and I think he has tried to reinvent that in his time here. He hasn't fully achieved the results expected and he created much of those expectations by constantly espousing he would restore the Program to prominence. His W/L fell short of what he created and promised. SO, THE HEAT HE GETS IS SOMEWHAT SELF INFLICTED.
So, what did Lou have that is missing? I think he had the ability to get enough high caliber players, support them with good fundamentally sound role players and play hard all the time.. Lou's teams rarely quit during any game, even in blowouts, which were rare. He was one of a kind, as is Boeheim, Coach K, ETC. We may never get that again but, must keep trying.
Back then, most high quality NYC HS players would come to St john's almost automatically. Why not? Our teams won a lot of games from the early days of College BB, RISING TO AS HIGH AS 4TH All Time in Wins. Our Coaches were honorable men who were great COACHES TOO.
Kareem likely would have come here if Lapchick wasn't forcibly retired. There is documentation to that effect. Had he played here for 3 years, our Program might have had 3-4 NCAA TITLES. bUT, HE DIDN'T.
Louie has a charismatic type personality, capable of capturing corporate executives or the Parents of a prime recruit. And, once they came here, they loved playing for him..He had a methodical type system, learned largely from Lapchick that players could quickly master and then repeat during games, at every interval. It was winning basketball , with good fundamentals and few mistakes.. Defense? Always man to man and hard nosed.
Of course, things have changed but, one thing I give Lavin credit for is he understands what the heritage of the Program once was and I think he has tried to reinvent that in his time here. He hasn't fully achieved the results expected and he created much of those expectations by constantly espousing he would restore the Program to prominence. His W/L fell short of what he created and promised. SO, THE HEAT HE GETS IS SOMEWHAT SELF INFLICTED.
So, what did Lou have that is missing? I think he had the ability to get enough high caliber players, support them with good fundamentally sound role players and play hard all the time.. Lou's teams rarely quit during any game, even in blowouts, which were rare. He was one of a kind, as is Boeheim, Coach K, ETC. We may never get that again but, must keep trying.
