SJHooper wrote:Does it exist for us? I had to sit here through the Lavin and now Mullin years constantly told that we were a year or two away. We are in a perpetual cycle of "just wait!", "we are young!", "well, we had some injuries", "we had bad luck", "we played a great team", "this conference is tough", "give it time", "hammer to rock", "trust the process", "we were in some of the games". I've heard every excuse in the book and not nearly enough straight talk regarding results and the lack of accountability. At times I honestly feel like I'm one of the very few SJ fans that demands results at the end of the day. Syracuse felt great, Butler felt great. DePaul is DePaul, we were supposed to beat them. But to act like those 2 wins made up for this dumpster fire of a season is outrageous. People seem to forget the expectations coming into this season. There was chatter of an NIT berth and even a possible dark horse NCAA berth. Reading Redmen I even saw some predicting 21+ wins. Maybe one poster predicted 15 and that was the extreme low end but this is what I believed was doable. We brought in some good recruits and we knew we would likely struggle some games but figured we would be able to take care of business against the LIU/Delaware State/Penn State's of the world. We figured we could snag at least 1 game in the Atlantis tournament but could not even beat ODU.
I wrote to our Athletic Director and I urge you to do the same. I urged him to install accountability and separate emotions from results. We all love Mullin, but it's clear he is not the answer. He got a little break from the pitchforks and torches when we won those 2 big games, but any real college hoops fan knows 2 games is nothing in an entire season. I used to get the feeling under Lavin that he was an awful coach and the only reason they won 20 games a few times and went to the tourney was because of their talent alone. I get the sense that no matter who is coaching this team, we can beat Cuse/Butler on rare occasion just based on talent and red-hot shooting. Our season is akin to failing 10 tests miserably then getting 90's on the next 2 before getting 3 more failing grades. Those two 90's don't even come close to washing away all the failing grades and your final grade will still be very low. So I ask, is anyone else on board? I know most of you are way more optimistic than me (I think to a fault...it goes both ways), so for that crowd, what exactly will it take to get you to realize we are on a train with no conductor?
I'm not a St. Johns guy (Nova alum) but IMO Mullin has neither the passion, enthusiasm nor the coaching intellect to be a successful head coach at St. Johns, or anywhere else for that matter. From what I've seen so far, all too often he seems either disinterested or totally lost on the sideline, especially during a timeout when instruction, criticism, and enthusiasm are needed-----from HIM, not someone else on the staff!! No matter how many quality players he recruits, I believe Mullin will almost always be at a coaching disadvantage, and because of that I dont think he'll ever be able to "maximize" the talent and potential of his players, which should always be the goal-------and in my mind thats really the biggest issue. To me he just doesnt seem to want it bad enough, nor does he seem to have the interest or desire to "better learn" how to be an effective and knowledgeable head coach (I see no improvement) ---------and thats a shame!! I really do think they can do better than CM-------and hopefully they will because in my mind the Big East really needs St. Johns to be a good upper tier program going forward because its been far too long since they've even been relevant in this sport, let alone this conference!! I'd love to see them return to the glory days when Mullin was a great player, but unfortunately I just dont think they'll ever get there with Chris Mullin as their coach----unless or until he makes some serious changes in how he approaches and fulfills his overall job as a leader, a teacher and a head coach!!
Just my 2 cents as an ""outside" observer!