Xavier Game

At the game tonight. Interesting.. I am less pissed watching live then watching on tv. Anybody see d angelo. Man.. he was complete no show tonight. Kid is so good at times and then in games like tonight he just cant deliver a high quality game. He couldn't shoot at all tonight. Gods gift.. 3 missed free throws and phil green cant shoot. Overall very disappointing game.
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Got to credit Xavier's coach for his switching defense. Every move Harrison made he was doubled teamed. Stop Harrison and you beat the Johnnies.
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Harrelson had plenty of open shots, I dont think he hit any. I was watching him in practice tonight before the game, he wasnt hitting those either and no one was in his face. He had a bad night. They should have sat him for 15 minutes and let him watch
 
It what it is but I can't remember a worse live game I experienced in my life. I was so disappointed with the fan support and obviously the team came out flat. It was a big game and I don't tink they can recover from this. It is BET or bust. Sad showing for Ny, big east and st johns tonight.
 
And the most disappointing thing about the game tonight. 3,000 people showed up...

The school is kidding itself into thinking it can play games at a big arena like MSG. It is totally a terrible environment to watch a lightly attended college basketball game. Hate to say it folks but the time has come for the school to realize it is not even a big mid major fan base and needs a much smaller venue. Play the games on campus and spend some money to further spruce up the on campus arena. When Sryacuse, Louisville, Uconn, WVA, Pitt and ND came to down they put their fans in the seats to make it a MSG home game. There were probably 10 Xavier fans at the garden. But, go to a Xavier home game.. Much different story.

It is just plain embarrasing to attend these games with the arena 20% full. The school is doing a disservice to everyone and will need to readdress their entire plan going forward.
 
xavier got more layups during the game than they did in pre game warmups

someone needs to give our defense red capes to oley them in.

We'd be great bullfighters
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I may have pointed out once or twice that we stop nobody off the dribble. Nobody. The good news is we hardly got beat on any backdoor cuts tonight, I think Xavier only ran a few for dunks.

We had a tough time defensively against Xavier. Stainbrook was too big for Sampson, Obekpa seemed limited by the ankle, and Gift is too small to play his position at this level. Sanchez actually did a decent job on him during the stretch in the first half when he finally put his game together for about 8 minutes and did what I thought he was capable of doing all year. Then he disappeared again, which is unfortunately what he does.

Reynolds destroyed Sampson tonight. Last I looked he had a double-double with 15 points and 15 boards and was getting to the rim all night. Sampson has become a good defender but not tonight.

Offensively Xavier had no trouble stopping us. Our offense is 75% isolation for whoever has the ball, 15% pick and pop, and 10% pick and roll. There is nothing else. That has been woefully evident at the end of every close game when good teams have plays that are designed to spring someone (or more than one someone) open in addition to giving the ballhandler an option. We give the ballhandler the ball and hope he can figure something out. Tonight that somehow ended up being Sanchez on the wing late in the game. Really?? Xavier understood that all they needed to do was deny the ballhandler a shot and there would be nothing else to worry about, and for the most part they were right. Our guards went 9/31 from the field, including a stellar 1/11 for Harrison.

We have talent, but we are simply not a well-coached team.
 
The only positive we can take from this loss is that it could have been much worse.  Xavier will likely be the 3rd Big East team in the Dance and the only hope Saint John's now has is praying for a savior to emerge in the Big East Tournament.  Forget RPI and SOS, there will be upsets in conference tourneys that will allow lesser teams to the dance.  As disappointing as this loss was at MSG, the most pathetic thing about tonight was that barley 6700 fans showed up for a critical game.  All it took was the loss to Nova to deflate both the fans and the team.  Imagine a SJ player looking around MSG 15 minutes before tip off and seeing a mostly empty arena.  

As for the players, had it not been for Jordan and Sanchez, the team looked like a bunch of high school kids playing together for the first time.  Collectively, we were clueless on offense and our interior defense was offensive to watch. Our future pro Jakarr Sampson was manhandled by a Xavier frosh named Reynolds who collected 17 (SEVENTEEN) rebounds!  I can only imagine what NBA guys with 2-3 years under their belt would do to him should he make an NBA team.  D'Angelo Harrison played like he had money on Xavier. He, Greene and Pointer were the 3 amigos who could not do one thing right all night.  Jamal Branch started and contributed zero assists.  To be fair, props go to the Xavier defense that was relentless all game long.
It would be easy to blame the wizard for this loss but with the atrocious no show performance by Harrison my only criticism was that Lavin played D'Lo too much as his stench was so intense that even Marco Bourgault would have been an improvement.
Lavin needs to drill these guys extra hard the next 3 days and remind all of them that playing is a privilege earned and not a right.  The last two losses the offense returned to all the bad offensive sets that relied on forced jumpers and failure to get the ball inside.  Luckily DePaul beat Seton Hall so they may be a little less hungry the next game.  
 
@jeffborzello: Had a St. John's alum text me: "One of the most significant losses in program history." Could be true. Likely means no NCAA. Buzz dissipates
 
I feel no reason to attack the team or any player or coach tonight. They just looked like they had nothing more to give after digging out of the 0 and 5 start. The hell Jordan went through with losing another family member and Obekpa playing hurt didn't help matters. It looked like the whole team had their hearts ripped out. Xavier gave them nothing, playing solid D throughout. Season is not over. Even if there is no dancing, the great part of being a SJU fan is that there is no graduation day for true fans. We can hopefully come back next year and start with high hopes.
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Ray Morgan yep, lets all be happy that we can say NEXT YEAR like we do every year. I guess some people don`t mind repeating themselves every year.
I could accept getting swept by villanova, but Xavier??? They don`t even win road games. We just gave them layup after layup, and it took us over 13minutes of the 2nd half to score double digits? Guess they own SJU this year.

So we better win the last 2 regular season games and make it to Saturday night of the tourny
This loss really bothers me.
 
Here's how I view tonight:

No doubt about it, we played like sh*t. One of our worst games in a while. But ya know what, this was still a game that we could have won, despite how poorly we played. This was a game where our best player was 1-11 from the field. But ya know what, we still could have won this game. This was a game where we only shot 36% from the floor, but we still could have won. This was a game where we shot 54% from the free throw line, but a game that we could have won. This was a game where we shot 12.5% from the 3pt line, but we still could have won. This was a game where our starting center was coming off a sprained ankle, and our starting point guard was just returning after a family tragedy. And guess what, we could have won this game. I know this isn't the time or place for 'moral victories', but I like the fact that we can play like that and still be in the game with a minute and a half to go.

As far as the NCAA's go, I still feel we will make it....we just have a little more work to do now. We win our last 2 and we are 20-11 heading into the BE tourny. We win one or two in the BE tourny and we are sitting at either 21-12 or 22-12, and I think that will be enough to get in....
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Are you related to Steve Serby of the NY post? He repeats the same phrase over and over in some of his columns. "we cstill could have won the game?" Well we didn't. In fact we lost by double digits.
 
Why didn't Jordan start? I know Lavin has a "rule" that if you miss practice, you don't start. But obviously, Jordan had no choice in the matter. Don't you think in the most critical game of the season you should go with your best players out of the gate? Or is that just delusional thinking?
 
Why didn't Jordan start? I know Lavin has a "rule" that if you miss practice, you don't start. But obviously, Jordan had no choice in the matter. Don't you think in the most critical game of the season you should go with your best players out of the gate? Or is that just delusional thinking?
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Jordan not starting had zero impact on the game.
 
Granted nobody had a good game but With about 5 minutes left in the first half we actually had a lead of about 3 pts and Lavin chose to sit Sampson Jordan And Harrison and go with a lineup where Greene was our best scoring option on the floor with pointer, obekpa and branch. We went 4 minutes without scoring and It went straight downhill from there.
 
Why didn't Jordan start? I know Lavin has a "rule" that if you miss practice, you don't start. But obviously, Jordan had no choice in the matter. Don't you think in the most critical game of the season you should go with your best players out of the gate? Or is that just delusional thinking?
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Jordan not starting had zero impact on the game.
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Well, it's hard to prove a negative, isn't it? He's the best PG we have and a playmaker.
 
Why didn't Jordan start? I know Lavin has a "rule" that if you miss practice, you don't start. But obviously, Jordan had no choice in the matter. Don't you think in the most critical game of the season you should go with your best players out of the gate? Or is that just delusional thinking?
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Jordan not starting had zero impact on the game.
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Well, it's hard to prove a negative, isn't it? He's the best PG we have and a playmaker.
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The game was a 1 pt game at the half. The game was tied with 12 minutes left.
There are 99 other problems last night. Him not starting is far down that list IMO

*Also the playmaker had 1 assist last night I think. He's very good at getting into the lane. However both he and Harrison are not getting the fouls lately doing that. And without someone waiting in a good position for a kick in that situation its all for naught.
 
Why didn't Jordan start? I know Lavin has a "rule" that if you miss practice, you don't start. But obviously, Jordan had no choice in the matter. Don't you think in the most critical game of the season you should go with your best players out of the gate? Or is that just delusional thinking?
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If that is the rule, then he had to sit them. Coaches can't afford to make exceptions for some players and not the others. This isn't the pro's, you don't have special rules for your superstars. Say he starts Jordan last night...and then going into Sunday's game, Jakaar decides to miss practice on Saturday just because he wants to..what does Lavin do? How could Lavin justify starting Jordan and then not Jakaar? And then DLo misses a practice...and then Dom misses a practice. You just can't do it.

You need to run the team as if they are a union. Have the same rules and consequences for everyone, regardless of the situation.
 
That game sucked. And to top it off we had a row of dbag Xavier games behind us. I think the fans of these new teams are coming in with this sense of entitlement because they used to be the power house team in their old league.
 
Why didn't Jordan start? I know Lavin has a "rule" that if you miss practice, you don't start. But obviously, Jordan had no choice in the matter. Don't you think in the most critical game of the season you should go with your best players out of the gate? Or is that just delusional thinking?
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If that is the rule, then he had to sit them. Coaches can't afford to make exceptions for some players and not the others. This isn't the pro's, you don't have special rules for your superstars. Say he starts Jordan last night...and then going into Sunday's game, Jakaar decides to miss practice on Saturday just because he wants to..what does Lavin do? How could Lavin justify starting Jordan and then not Jakaar? And then DLo misses a practice...and then Dom misses a practice. You just can't do it.

You need to run the team as if they are a union. Have the same rules and consequences for everyone, regardless of the situation.
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Jordan's aunt was murdered! He did not "miss practice because he wanted to."
 
a few said they would make the trip but very disappointed in the crowd. 17K for Villanova Saturday and 6.7K Tuesday.
It takes awhile to break patterns.
 
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