Zags reporting MA Will Be Brought Back. Please boycott the games and donations
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He did go to back to back elite 8s, but this was 7 years ago. More recently, he's had sub .500 seasons in 3 of the past 5 years including this one. Has only made the NCAA tournament once in the past 6 years. We could do way better.
I am not sure why you think we can do "way better". Obviously, from a BB perspective, Pitino would be way better, but if you take that off the table, why would anyone expect that it would be easy to do way better than a guy like Brey? I think at this juncture, we have to hope to pick the right up and comer to bring us back to some semblance of consistency and success. I think our expectations need to be (unfortunately) a little more realistic and tempered since no one is banging down the doors to come to this program, which has been in the dumps more or less for more than 2 decades. That is the reality. See the past coaching search where largely unknown mid-major guys ran the other way. Not sure why the results now would be any better this time around (again, taking RP off the table).
I dont disagree with you. And I'm not saying Pitino is definitely way better. But Brey is nearly 65. It's quite possible his best days are behind him, and who knows maybe he's lost the passion and hunger that made him successful years ago. Similar to what we're seeing at Butler. That's the only perspective I was looking at it from.
Larry Wright
Well-known member
Obviously I would love Pitino because he is obviously the best coach who would be available and one of the best to ever coach college basketball. Ironically even though considered a failure in the NBA he was one of my top 3 favorite Knick coaches as well.
However here is why I never even considered it a possibility that he would come here. We Are ST John’s! We can’t have nice things. Would be like a poor family dreaming of a 70 Inch flat screen a tropical vacation or a Mercedes. Not going to happen.
But here is the thing, every March I watch 68 teams make the tournament. That means 68 coaches are better than the ST John’s coach almost every year. Ok so we aren’t getting a flat screen, but can we at least get a new toaster? If not Pitino surely we can get the coaching equivalent of a new toaster.
However here is why I never even considered it a possibility that he would come here. We Are ST John’s! We can’t have nice things. Would be like a poor family dreaming of a 70 Inch flat screen a tropical vacation or a Mercedes. Not going to happen.
But here is the thing, every March I watch 68 teams make the tournament. That means 68 coaches are better than the ST John’s coach almost every year. Ok so we aren’t getting a flat screen, but can we at least get a new toaster? If not Pitino surely we can get the coaching equivalent of a new toaster.
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i'll say this, as someone who is now leaning going after a younger, up and coming coach.
It's not that an up and comer coach would automatically be "better" than Brey, but it would be better for us, which is a key distinction to me.
Hiring a coach after firing one is kinda like getting back on the dating scene after a breakup. What's the point of finding someone new if you are going to make the same mistakes you made with your last person?
We are getting out of a relationship with a nice, experienced coach who had experience coaching in a power 5 conference. He is however, clearly out of his prime as a coach.
So (hopefully) when SJU is back on the market, we look at it someone who brings something new to the table. Or else we will just be retreading onto old ground
Let’s break it down:
1) St John’s is not a land grant school, who has no real community around campus. Commuter school which is great, but no real student community on campus to build on.
2) Booster support: I don’t have a real breakdown on this, but it really hasn’t been there, and the TOP schools have money to burn. We are not in that position.
3) If we can agree on one thing, COVID requirements were taken much more serious here in NY than pretty much anywhere in the country. The staff and the players were pretty much tortured in a way to play as many games as we did.
4) Futhermore, COVID affected the Johnnies (this is a fact whether you want to believe or not) and our staffs ability to build the way they normally would construct and be able to evaluate. We are not everybody else. If you think schools in Tx and Ks or Ark was doing the same regulations, I’ll give you a fairy tale to believe in.
5) St John’s is not program that needs to hire coaches every 4 years. That’s not smart IMO. Yes fans are dissatisfied, but last time I checked, there hasn’t been a serious run since Artest in the Elite 8. Outside of that, almost a mid major. Facts are facts.
I don’t blame fans for dissatisfaction, and voicing concern and discontent is normal.
The expectation for a small metro catholic school in nowadays college basketball is a not realistic to where they are at right now.
Yes I agree, better coaching decisions are a factor as well, but if we’re gonna replace a coach, esp SJU, I don’t think it would be the smartest decision this particular season. Plus there still a lot of ball to be played.
Why would you talk about replacements when the coach still has to recruit and sell to build his program??
Keyboard warriors are not the brightest ones, I’ll tell you that. Anyways…
Go Johnnies.
The kids hear and feel the hate. And they are riding for their coach. It is what it is.
1) St John’s is not a land grant school, who has no real community around campus. Commuter school which is great, but no real student community on campus to build on.
2) Booster support: I don’t have a real breakdown on this, but it really hasn’t been there, and the TOP schools have money to burn. We are not in that position.
3) If we can agree on one thing, COVID requirements were taken much more serious here in NY than pretty much anywhere in the country. The staff and the players were pretty much tortured in a way to play as many games as we did.
4) Futhermore, COVID affected the Johnnies (this is a fact whether you want to believe or not) and our staffs ability to build the way they normally would construct and be able to evaluate. We are not everybody else. If you think schools in Tx and Ks or Ark was doing the same regulations, I’ll give you a fairy tale to believe in.
5) St John’s is not program that needs to hire coaches every 4 years. That’s not smart IMO. Yes fans are dissatisfied, but last time I checked, there hasn’t been a serious run since Artest in the Elite 8. Outside of that, almost a mid major. Facts are facts.
I don’t blame fans for dissatisfaction, and voicing concern and discontent is normal.
The expectation for a small metro catholic school in nowadays college basketball is a not realistic to where they are at right now.
Yes I agree, better coaching decisions are a factor as well, but if we’re gonna replace a coach, esp SJU, I don’t think it would be the smartest decision this particular season. Plus there still a lot of ball to be played.
Why would you talk about replacements when the coach still has to recruit and sell to build his program??
Keyboard warriors are not the brightest ones, I’ll tell you that. Anyways…
Go Johnnies.
The kids hear and feel the hate. And they are riding for their coach. It is what it is.
You make some fair points, but we also understand you are related(??) to coach so obviously you are a bit biased.
Larry Wright
Well-known member
See it seems that they have tuned him out
When that happens time for a change.
1. You haven't been to the school in the past 20 years.
2. Top schools are top schools because they win and then comes the money to burn.
3. CMA's best season was the COVID season so the "torture" worked.
4. Again, extraordinarily lame to use COVID as an excuse. Plenty of other programs were in states and cities that had similar policies to NYC. See Villanova, UCLA, etc.
5. Yes. St. John's has been mediocre, at best, for 20 years. Staying the course with a coaching staff that shows no sign of changing may not be the best course of action.
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Appreciate the thoughtful post. But there are a couple of issues for me.
1. SJU has always been a predominantly commuter school, but that does not excuse the abysmal basketball decisions that have led us down this path. Marquette for example, is also a catholic school in an urban environment and is predominantly a commuter school. They have managed to figure it out.
2. SJU may not have money to burn (Fr. Harrington and Cecilia Chang did incinerate a large amount however), but it does have money. And since you cannot compete financially against other schools, then you need to have people in charge who will get the best bang for the buck. Instead, the decision makers are just piling new bad decisions on top of old bad decisions. As if that will make it go away.
3. The Covid lockdowns hurt SJU. But it hurt other institutions of all types as well in NY. I do not want to get into it much further because I will have to ban myself twice for getting political. But ask the mom and pop shop how they felt about being closed while Amazon, Walmart, and the big retailers all were allowed to stay open.
4. SJU is not competing against TX, KS, or AR, but I wish they were. I am asking they just compete with Providence.
5. Of course it isn’t smart for SJU to hire a coach every four years. It is wise for any school to do that. But that is the predicament we are in because the people in charge of hiring keep screwing up. I guess it would be better to keep hammering a square peg in a round hole, since this is what SJU does best when hiring coaches. How do you make an NCAA tournament run, when you struggle to win enough games to qualify for the NIT?
If we are going to just accept mediocrity because SJU is a “small metro Catholic school”, then let’s stop pretending to be a member of the BE, and drop the “We Are New York City’s Team” slogan to “We Are New York City’s Small Metro Catholic School Team” and call it a day. If we are going to swim with the big fish, then we should stop acting like a minnow.
The large majority of us do not want Anderson fired in season. That is counterproductive. And many remember the Pittsburgh debacle.
Anderson cannot worry about roster building at the moment. He has to find a way to build this team up and get this team in the NCAA Tournament (and that will only happen by winning the BE tournament at this point). Without that, he deserves to be fired.
And I may fall under the nit so bright keyboard warrior category, but what else do we have? It sure seems as if the Board would rather enjoy cocktails at the Hamptons than enjoy a winning basketball program.
If the kids hear and feel the hate, then they also hear and feel the crushing disappointment from its fan base.
RedmanMike
Well-known member
Big Red makes some valid points, but the question I keep asking myself is "Can Mike Anderson get us where we all want to go?"
I think these are reasonable goals...
- 20-24 wins per year
- In the top half of the Big East most years
- Make the Dance most years
- Have a realistic shot to get to the second weekend in a good year
After watching him for four years, do we honesltly think Mike Anderson can get us there? Personally, I don't think so.
I think these are reasonable goals...
- 20-24 wins per year
- In the top half of the Big East most years
- Make the Dance most years
- Have a realistic shot to get to the second weekend in a good year
After watching him for four years, do we honesltly think Mike Anderson can get us there? Personally, I don't think so.
I think this is a better break down:
1. In his second season, CMA seemed to be turning the corner in the second half when Moore (who had been superb after a tough start) appeared to all but quit on the team.
2. In his second off-season, all but three players transfer in the biggest mass exodus that year in college bball.
3. In his third season, the transfers brought in do not come close to replacing our outgoing transfers except Aaron Wheeler who has a very good second half.
4. In his third season, CMA still can't win despite having a 2-time all Big East player and the reigning rookie of the year/co-defemsive player of the year.
5. In his fourth season, CMA ties his coaching future to Curbelo whose difficulties off the court outweigh his difficulties on it. The chemistry of the team is in tatters and seemingly everyone can see the problem but him.
1. In his second season, CMA seemed to be turning the corner in the second half when Moore (who had been superb after a tough start) appeared to all but quit on the team.
2. In his second off-season, all but three players transfer in the biggest mass exodus that year in college bball.
3. In his third season, the transfers brought in do not come close to replacing our outgoing transfers except Aaron Wheeler who has a very good second half.
4. In his third season, CMA still can't win despite having a 2-time all Big East player and the reigning rookie of the year/co-defemsive player of the year.
5. In his fourth season, CMA ties his coaching future to Curbelo whose difficulties off the court outweigh his difficulties on it. The chemistry of the team is in tatters and seemingly everyone can see the problem but him.
This would be a good read, if at any point in this breakdown there was some accountability directed towards Anderson... But alas, seems like its all of the other reasons why we are doodoo!
“The expectation for a small metro Catholic school.” That’s where you lost me. SJU is the third largest Catholic university in the US with an enrollment of 19,658, which represents a 2.4% decline from last year. We were the second largest in the US but now are behind DePaul and Georgetown.
And criticism of Anderson as coach does not always translate to hatred. So many who criticize anyone these days is called a “hater.” That’s a copout. And I don’t know if the kids are riding for their coach or their own self respect. I tend to think more the latter.
Lived on campus for 3 years from 2016-19. There is absolutely a community on campus. And they come out and support when there is a reason to. Don't know why people are pushing these lies about the school to defend a coach. Really weird
and no, that doesn't mean its community is as large or potent as big football schools or things like that, but there is still absolutely a community there
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Sorry this is pretty weak. The COVID stuff is just bizarre, since most of the schools SJU competes against were under the same restrictions.
I agree continuity is a big problem. But excuses aside there has to be some acceptable threshold of success for a coach. Since the football schools left, the Big East (except for UCONN) is made up of schools just like SJU. If an SJU coach is unable to compete in the conference the coach is going to have to go. Especially if that coach gets paid a Big East market value salary.
I’m not a person sitting here rooting for failure. Win out which gets the team to .500 in conference (which doesn’t seem like an outlandish goal in year four) and keep building. But if this team comes in eighth or ninth in it’s own league again how is it unreasonable to want to move on?
If all of these obstacles make doing that such an impossibility - the huge (?) goal of winning half the conference games say half the time (Anderson is on pace to barely do that one out of four) then it doesn’t matter who the coach is. And in that case it might as well be a very inexpensive one. Because any coach can lose.
This sounds harsh and the truth is I like Anderson and want him to succeed. But he’s in a results business and he is failing. When that occurs you lose your job.
The math still exists for this team to get to 10-10. They do that I will be one person very much behind this coach.
I’m not a person sitting here rooting for failure. Win out which gets the team to .500 in conference (which doesn’t seem like an outlandish goal in year four) and keep building. But if this team comes in eighth or ninth in it’s own league again how is it unreasonable to want to move on?
If all of these obstacles make doing that such an impossibility - the huge (?) goal of winning half the conference games say half the time (Anderson is on pace to barely do that one out of four) then it doesn’t matter who the coach is. And in that case it might as well be a very inexpensive one. Because any coach can lose.
This sounds harsh and the truth is I like Anderson and want him to succeed. But he’s in a results business and he is failing. When that occurs you lose your job.
The math still exists for this team to get to 10-10. They do that I will be one person very much behind this coach.
MugCostanza
Well-known member
I don't know what this means. The worst thing a program can do is hang on to a coach a year or two too long. That sets the program back even longer. It's like QBs in the NFL - you have to keep trying until you find the right guy and cut bait as soon as you realize the current guy isn't going to take you to where you want to go.
Also, there literally isn't a lot of ball left to be played. There's 5 regular season games left and barring a miracle 4 day run in the BET we're essentially mathematically eliminated from any type of successful season.