Holy Land fan poll - who finishes in 6th this season?

[NJRedman]

Wait, are you now defending Lavin? Before you've been criticizing him more than anyone else on this board. You can't have it both ways.
And yes, I think Whitehead will be ready for Big East play. Ten games is enough to adjust for someone with that much talent. For the record, I see the Hall narrowly defeating the Johnnies on NYE.

I'm not defending Lavin, I just think Willard isn't a good coach at all. Also you have no idea just what his actual talent level is.

[stever20]

If Whitehead is anything like a top 20 level recruit, Seton Hall will be good. They were 6-12 in conference play with a whopping 4 1 point losses and 2 5 point losses. If he can turn 2/3 of those into wins, they're 10-8 and 21-13 overall. actually probably closer to 23-24 wins because they wouldn't have those 4 OOC losses either. I know folks want to doubt Seton Hall- but they aren't the old Pirates...

And St John's doesn't have much room to talk.
St John's- 1 NCAA win, 4 games since 2000
Seton Hall- 3 NCAA wins, 6 games since 2000

and was brought up that Seton Hall 1st appearance was 1988. Well, Seton Hall has EXACTLY the same number of NCAA tourney appearances as St John's since then. St John's is just as irrelevent now as Seton Hall is. What they did 30+ years ago means pretty much... nothing today. Love how St John's folks on here act like they're some Gods and they own the conference. Nope. Part of the problem with our perception quite frankly is how St John's is in the tank and has been in the tank for quite some time.

[PhillyPirate]

St Johns will probably be the easiest team to defend this year. That is why I have them at 6th. Focus all your attention at Harrison and dare everyone else to beat you. Obepka gives gives you nothing on offense, it has been admitted by SJU fans Thomas is mainly a rebounder, everyone else but just scores on putbacks and break aways. Jordan I think is real good and will be able to shoulder the burden but your scoring will really only come from 2 sources. What happens with injuries, foul trouble, or the suspenstion that seems to always surround those 2 guys.

Seton Hall I think has plenty of issues but will be more balanced in that regard. Whitehead, Gibbs, Sina, and Carrington will all be able to contribute. There is also a senior power forward Mobley who can stretch the floor with the 3 and was a big contributor last year.

3 Guard lineup and running more think puts SHU in a better spot than St Johns, though not by that much.

[SJHooper]

St Johns will probably be the easiest team to defend this year. That is why I have them at 6th. Focus all your attention at Harrison and dare everyone else to beat you. Obepka gives gives you nothing on offense, it has been admitted by SJU fans Thomas is mainly a rebounder, everyone else but just scores on putbacks and break aways. Jordan I think is real good and will be able to shoulder the burden but your scoring will really only come from 2 sources. What happens with injuries, foul trouble, or the suspenstion that seems to always surround those 2 guys.

Seton Hall I think has plenty of issues but will be more balanced in that regard. Whitehead, Gibbs, Sina, and Carrington will all be able to contribute. There is also a senior power forward Mobley who can stretch the floor with the 3 and was a big contributor last year.

3 Guard lineup and running more think puts SHU in a better spot than St Johns, though not by that much.

It's ok just conveniently leave out our 5 star PG Rysheed Jordan who would have won Big East ROY if the season was a bit longer as he just started to turn it on at the end. So guard Harrison…ok give it to Jordan who was scoring at will last season. Guard Jordan? Greene shot 40% from 3 last year and is a very underrated guard. Branch is another guard we have who was top 50. He is ok…nothing special but if you're too busy with the other guards and give him room he can make you pay too. Thomas is mainly a rebounder and dunker but he has touch that may surprise you on offense. Just saw recent film.

I love how people are crowning Whitehead before he even plays a game. 10 games in is enough to get ready for Big East play? Some SJ players are just getting used to it now in their Soph/JR years. It happens. This is the Big East. There are PLENTY of top 20 type players who never amount to anymore than a mediocre player with no real impact. We have Pointer who was an All-Jordan brand 5 star top 20 ish pick and he's awful. So until he actually proves he can continue to play like he did in HS immediately in the Big East I'm not sold.

And by the way, I'd be a lot more scared if Whitehead was on Nova with Wright coaching him up. But you guys have Willard…who is probably barely better than Lavin at developing players.

[Amase2]

St Johns will probably be the easiest team to defend this year. That is why I have them at 6th. Focus all your attention at Harrison and dare everyone else to beat you. Obepka gives gives you nothing on offense, it has been admitted by SJU fans Thomas is mainly a rebounder, everyone else but just scores on putbacks and break aways. Jordan I think is real good and will be able to shoulder the burden but your scoring will really only come from 2 sources. What happens with injuries, foul trouble, or the suspenstion that seems to always surround those 2 guys.

Seton Hall I think has plenty of issues but will be more balanced in that regard. Whitehead, Gibbs, Sina, and Carrington will all be able to contribute. There is also a senior power forward Mobley who can stretch the floor with the 3 and was a big contributor last year.

3 Guard lineup and running more think puts SHU in a better spot than St Johns, though not by that much.

I agree that St. John's might struggle to score. That is my biggest concern. The problem with your argument is that you are giving seton hall credit for having carrington and Sina, but not doing so for sju with Greene and Branch, two more accomplished and experienced guards.

And weren't most seton hall fans complaining about playing slow last year?

[Chalmers0]

I like Rysheed Jordan. I think he is EXTREMELY talented. Can we please stop acting like he is some unstoppable offensive force? His KenPom ORating last year was 95.5. That is actually pretty below average. In Big East play, only 7 times (out of 19 games) was his ORating over 100. It was actually 70 or less 5 times. He shot 28% from 3 point range.

I'm not saying he sucks by any means, so please don't jump overboard and claim that. Obviously I expect him to improve a decent amount from Freshmen year to this year. I'm just stating that I am not going to pick St. John's to do a whole lot simply based on the argument that they have the best back court in the Big East.

[Hall2012]

I'm glad Xavier and Nova fans are being honest here. It's just pretty laughable that a brand new team is picked to go dancing with a bunch of babies at #48 while SJ is #85 with some of the best players in the conference who are all veterans. I would have to agree that Lavin must be the sole reason. If we are talking about potential though SHU should be the #85 and SJ should be the #48. SHU is a team that has something like 9 tourney appearances which is barely higher than many mid majors. SJ has been terrible for much of the past 3 decades and has nearly 30. So to expect SHU to go from irrelevant to NCAA tourney while losing some good veterans and gaining rookies is foolish. Someone said "Not all top 20 players start out great". I would go further and say MOST do not have a good start and usually don't start showing their potential until the end of the season i.e. Jordan. The only rookies you see carrying teams are the ones on UK, Duke, Cuse, etc. aka consensus top 5 recruit type players.

Unless Whitehead does his best Tyler Ennis impression and plays nearly perfectly, SHU will definitely not be in the tourney. I'd be impressed if they even sniffed the bubble. I see them as a .500 team.

LOL dude you're getting sour grapes over some preseason rankings? Relax, nobody's even played a game yet. It means literally nothing. But really, how long until you're on here complaining that St. John's sucks and the season is over and Lavin needs to be fired? December? January maybe?

[NJRedman]

If Whitehead is anything like a top 20 level recruit, Seton Hall will be good. They were 6-12 in conference play with a whopping 4 1 point losses and 2 5 point losses. If he can turn 2/3 of those into wins, they're 10-8 and 21-13 overall. actually probably closer to 23-24 wins because they wouldn't have those 4 OOC losses either. I know folks want to doubt Seton Hall- but they aren't the old Pirates...

And St John's doesn't have much room to talk.
St John's- 1 NCAA win, 4 games since 2000
Seton Hall- 3 NCAA wins, 6 games since 2000

and was brought up that Seton Hall 1st appearance was 1988. Well, Seton Hall has EXACTLY the same number of NCAA tourney appearances as St John's since then. St John's is just as irrelevent now as Seton Hall is. What they did 30+ years ago means pretty much... nothing today. Love how St John's folks on here act like they're some Gods and they own the conference. Nope. Part of the problem with our perception quite frankly is how St John's is in the tank and has been in the tank for quite some time.

Love how you didn't mention how we as a conference was screwed and that the AAC was going to be better than us this year and that you secretly hoped you were in that conference.

BTW troll, only two teams had a better conference record than SJU and we had more close losses than Seton hall. Sooooooo go kick rocks at CSNBBS.

St. John's 8 losses 55 points total 6.87 avg loss
Seton Hall 12 losses 95 points total 7.91 avg loss

[SJHooper]

If you want to look at things from a select few years vs. overall program then Butler can be compared with UK. George Mason can be compared with Cuse. Davidson can be compared with Kansas.

The point is that SHU has 9 OVERALL bids in their entire history. I believe that is the worst in the conference even after being weakened greatly. You can't take little snippets, you have to take programs as a whole. For those who question Jordan, he's not a 3 pt shooter…he's a penetrator. He goes to the rim. And those stats are way off because he really started to come into his own during the tail end of the season. He got off to a terrible start which skews his stats negatively. Whitehead is a rookie. He can be a bust or be the next Ennis. Wait until we see what he can do against real teams. Jordan clearly showed promise. IW has not because he hasn't played. I have no problem giving credit where it's due…I hate Cuse but Ennis was a beast last year and without him SJ would have beat them.

SHU has always been the step sister in the NYC area. Not saying SJ is anything great, but the SJ brand is still way stronger than the SHU brand. We are actually in NYC. SHU is on the outskirts in a different state. We play at the Garden…where does SHU play? We have 28 tourney appearances. SHU has 9. The last time we made the tourney was 2011. The last time SHU made it was…what? 2000? I have no idea. In the recent years SJ has missed the tourney at least we were on the bubble in the discussion. We just finished 3rd and had a 20 win season. SHU is almost never even close to the bubble. These are not the same caliber of programs if you look at the overall brand and success. May sound blunt and provocative, but look it up…it's true.

[stever20]

Seton Hall had 6 losses by 5 points or less.
St John's had 4 such losses.

Seton Halls avg loss looks bad because of 3 16 or 17 pt losses.

A select few years would be 4 or 5. But 25 years is a long time now.

Also- just look last 13 years...
St John's- 6 losing seasons, 3 more years where they finished 1 game over .500. 2 NCAA spots
Seton Hall- 5 losing seasons, 1 at .500 and 1 2 games over .500. 2 NCAA spots

I'm sorry- but there isn't that much difference in 2014. So to say St John's if they weren't in the tourney they were on the bubble is frankly a joke. Here's the St John's records when they were out of the tourney but with a winning record- 16-13, 16-15, 17-15, 16-15, 20-12. Only last year was a 20 win team, and they were hardly a bubble team end of the year- and that's the only year they were even remotely in the discussion. St John's is nothing right now but a tarnished brand quite frankly. Last 13 years, St John's is 199-207. Seton Hall is 211-194. In BE play, St John's is 85-137 in that time. Seton Hall is 89-133 in that time frame.

St John's being so mediocre is a major problem in the conference right now. We need St John's to be great. They are a flagship program. Seton Hall isn't. St John's shouldn't be 4 games worse than Seton Hall over a 13 year period in pretty much EVER.