The Holy Land of Hoops

I like that slogan on their court.

St John's is new york city's team, and the big east is new york city's conference. Doesn't matter how much a team from 8 hours away wants to claim the city.

St John's is new york city's team, and the big east is new york city's conference. Doesn't matter how much a team from 8 hours away wants to claim the city.

I agree that Syracuse's slogan is ridiculous, but if St. John's is really NYC's team, their fanbase sure has a funny way of showing it...16K crowd for the 'Cuse game at the Garden a few weeks ago and at least 11K - 12K were 'Cuse fans.

Fact is, no college will ever be "NYC's team" because NYC is too transient. People come to NYC from all around the country (all around the world really) and have allegiances to their own schools. They're not going to all of a sudden start rooting for St. John's/attending St. John's games just because they live here now.

Wrong

St John's is new york city's team

St John's has been really bad for a dozen yrs now. Their administration adandoned basketball during the norm roberts era. They have much to be ashamed of. But they are still new york city's team.

Lavin looks to be a good recruiter, good spokesman, terrible coach. He has returned relevancy to the program. When he steps down hopefully sju will hire a good recruiter, a good spokesman for the program, and a good game coach, and sju returns to their rightful place as biGgest draw in the city.

Both villanova and georgetown are as good draws to msg as syracuse is. Cuse just has had a nice run so their fans are more into the scene than the others.

What are you talking about 11-12k Cuse fans? It was 60-40 at best for the Cuse fans that day. Thats also because it's the only time they will have to see their team play this year while we had another 12 games at the Garden.

St John's has been really bad for a dozen yrs now. Their administration adandoned basketball during the norm roberts era. They have much to be ashamed of. But they are still new york city's team.

Wrong on the administration...3 things created the perfect storm:

1) Mike Javis burned alot of bridges with local HS and AAU coaches....Roberts couldn't fix the damage.

2) Prior to ~2000, St. John's didn't have dorms, so they were allowed to give their players a "housing stipend"...a lot of city kids pocketed this money and continued to live at home. When St. Johns constructed dorms, they couldn't give stipends anymore, so they lost this recruiting advantage.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/w ... 9/stjohns/

3) Circa ~2000, the legendary Riverside Hawks (AAU team) coach who steered many great players to St. John's over the years (the last of which was Ron Artest) was the subject of a criminal investigation for sexual abuse. While the DA didn't have enough evidence to prosecute, he was barred from coaching.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/i-tea ... -1.1078846

senditinjerome wrote:

St John's is new york city's team, and the big east is new york city's conference. Doesn't matter how much a team from 8 hours away wants to claim the city.

I agree that Syracuse's slogan is ridiculous, but if St. John's is really NYC's team, their fanbase sure has a funny way of showing it...16K crowd for the 'Cuse game at the Garden a few weeks ago and at least 11K - 12K were 'Cuse fans.

Fact is, no college will ever be "NYC's team" because NYC is too transient. People come to NYC from all around the country (all around the world really) and have allegiances to their own schools. They're not going to all of a sudden start rooting for St. John's/attending St. John's games just because they live here now.

Do you also wonder why the Yankees draw much more than the Mets? Syracuse might as well be the Yankees. Every year they seem to have a top 15 team if not top 5 team that always gets the perfect recruits, they always do what they need to, and they almost never lose at the Carrier Dome. The only reason anyone even knows Syracuse exists in the NYC area is because they have an amazing basketball program that has absolutely dominated for the past decade plus. Final Four's, Elite 8's, Sweet 16's, conference championships, even a National Championship in 2003…this is the kind of stuff Cuse fans are treated to all the time. It's very, very, very easy to be a Cuse fan. It's called front-running. Upstate NY does not have any real pro teams anyone cares about. There's nothing going on up there. So Syracuse is literally their pro team, because they are so dominant in college hoops on the national radar.

Now let's look at SJ. In the past decade 1 or 2 tournament berths, and maybe once advanced past the 1st round. Maybe twice, I don't know. But whatever it is, it's extremely rare. We have been the kings of mediocrity for a while. It just seems like a big black cloud has been hovering over Queens since our 1985 Final Four run and an occasional run in 1999 and 2003. It's a team that probably averages out to a legitimate ranked team once a decade. And when ranked it's like #18-#25 so it's not even that high. On a bad year Cuse is still a #20 team. That would be us on a great year.

The real way to test this would be to have SJ match Cuse's amazing top notch consistency over a decade always being in the top 15 or so and making deep runs. Do you really think for a second no SJ fans would show up? If SJ was doing what Cuse was doing, SJ would be the most popular NY team right now with everyone else sucking. MSG would be sold out all the time. We would gain tons of front-runner fans just like Cuse. In 2011 when the team was ranked and beat Duke, Nova, Pitt, UConn, etc. etc. all ranked in the top 10, the fan base was going insane. There was talk on PTI on ESPN about whether or not SJ was an Elite 8 team. So stop trying to compare apples to oranges. SJ fans would give their left nut to have a program like Cuse and expect to win every year. The problem is that this team almost never plays to its potential and being ranked or making the tourney are extremely rare occurrences. Let's see how many fans root for and show up at NFL games for teams who never make the playoffs. Now let's see how many fans root for and show up at NFL games for blue blood teams like the Packers, Patriots, and Colts (when Manning was there). Just a slight difference, huh? It's all about winning and SJ has not done much of it in a long time.