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

[SJHooper]

SHU: 9,800 total students and a campus in beautiful South Orange, NJ.
SJU: 20,000+ total students and campuses in Rome, Staten Island, Long Island, Queens, Manhattan, etc.

So there are more facts and figures to show the schools are quite different. We are the largest catholic university in the US. We are a large university with many campuses. SHU is a small university with only one campus I know of. Their history doesn't come close in basketball and even as the PC fan just said, SJ made the tourney after being ranked in the top 15 I believe and beating tons of top 10 teams. We then were "in" according to experts until all hell broke lose and our best player Harrison was suspended for the last 5 games or so. That put the nail in our coffin. And finally, last season we were in the tourney up until the end when we lost to PC.

So basically, we had a recent 3 year window where we made the tourney, then two years of right in the thick of the conversation of being a tourney team. Even though we didn't make it those 2 years it's way more than SHU can say. So we really are not as alike as you think.

-SJU has more than double the enrollment of SHU
-SJU has at least 5 campuses, 4 of which are within the NYC area and 1 in Rome
-SHU has 1 campus in South Orange
-SHU has 9 tourney appearances, SJU has 28
-SJU holds its place in the top 10 winningest programs ever…where is SHU on that list?
-SJU is in NYC and plays in MSG. SHU is in New Jersey and plays in…where? I couldn't even tell you.
-SJU has a handful of NBA stars some of which are in the HOF and played on the Team USA dream team they were so good
-SHU has no one of note coming from their program
-SJU has a more recognizable brand…seeing the "SJ" on a hat is immediately recognized by most. Seeing a blue pirate logo or "SH" is not known to many.
-SJU recruiting has been much better than SHU recruiting and it took them hiring a player's coach to convince a great one to finally come

So we really are not nearly as alike as you seem to think.

[Amase2]

SHU: 9,800 total students and a campus in beautiful South Orange, NJ.
SJU: 20,000+ total students and campuses in Rome, Staten Island, Long Island, Queens, Manhattan, etc.

So there are more facts and figures to show the schools are quite different. We are the largest catholic university in the US. We are a large university with many campuses. SHU is a small university with only one campus I know of. Their history doesn't come close in basketball and even as the PC fan just said, SJ made the tourney after being ranked in the top 15 I believe and beating tons of top 10 teams. We then were "in" according to experts until all hell broke lose and our best player Harrison was suspended for the last 5 games or so. That put the nail in our coffin. And finally, last season we were in the tourney up until the end when we lost to PC.

So basically, we had a recent 3 year window where we made the tourney, then two years of right in the thick of the conversation of being a tourney team. Even though we didn't make it those 2 years it's way more than SHU can say. So we really are not as alike as you think.

-SJU has more than double the enrollment of SHU
-SJU has at least 5 campuses, 4 of which are within the NYC area and 1 in Rome
-SHU has 1 campus in South Orange
-SHU has 9 tourney appearances, SJU has 28
-SJU holds its place in the top 10 winningest programs ever…where is SHU on that list?
-SJU is in NYC and plays in MSG. SHU is in New Jersey and plays in…where? I couldn't even tell you.
-SJU has a handful of NBA stars some of which are in the HOF and played on the Team USA dream team they were so good
-SHU has no one of note coming from their program
-SJU has a more recognizable brand…seeing the "SJ" on a hat is immediately recognized by most. Seeing a blue pirate logo or "SH" is not known to many.
-SJU recruiting has been much better than SHU recruiting and it took them hiring a player's coach to convince a great one to finally come

So we really are not nearly as alike as you seem to think.

Does duke have the same size enrollment as Rutgers? No. Does it matter? No. We are talking about basketball programs. Going back the last 25 years, that's a long freaking time. More than a generation.

St John's: 9 tourney appearances (one vacated), 9 wins.
Seton Hall: 8 tourney appearances, 14 wins.

Universally, yes. If you asked the general public nationally St. John's would be the bigger name. But not by leaps and bounds. To go around and spit in the face of other programs does us no good. It makes us look worse. Who are we to stick our nose up, we need to win some games and make some noise to do that.

[marquette]

We are the largest catholic university in the US.

DePaul is the largest catholic university in the US

[SJHooper]

You're right. DePaul is by a few thousand…just checked. But we are #2. My point is we have a much bigger reach than a school like SHU and that translates to branding in basketball. Never seen any SHU shirts, hats, jerseys, or anything in the tri-state area ever. I just saw a guy yesterday in the city wearing SJ gear, saw a few guys at outdoor bars wearing SJ jerseys, I see car stickers everywhere with the SJ. I don't think it's close at all.

You keep going by tourney appearances in whatever time window makes us look worst, but you refuse to take the programs whole because you know it's night and day then. Again you keep avoiding that SJU has been mildly relevant even when not making the tourney the past few years. Being on the bubble and generating hype is still way better than being totally irrelevant. Not proud of the bubble but when compared to SHU it's an achievement.

I'm finished with this though. Take each program in wholesome and you will see how different we really are. Branding, prestige, past history, NBA players produced, HOFer's produced, size, campuses, and tourney appearances couldn't be further apart.

[Professor_Bulldog]

Fellas fellas please, you're both terrible.

[SJHooper]

20 wins last year was considered a failure for us. Anything better than 8th place will be considered a brilliant season by Butler. At least SJ has had success in the big boys league. Something Butler can't say after being trampled on by nearly everyone.

[Irishdawg]

20 wins last year was considered a failure for us. Anything better than 8th place will be considered a brilliant season by Butler. At least SJ has had success in the big boys league. Something Butler can't say after being trampled on by nearly everyone.

Thanks for giving Butler an entire season after shifting leagues the last two years and losing the main reason why they were invited to the league in the first place (Brad Stevens) to earn the respect of the greatest College hoops tradition of all time.

It's a preseason fan poll, and it's just for one season, not based on whose tradition is better all-time. Some people may not agree with your opinion, and that's okay.

[muskienick]

I'm not sure I understand the fighting between fans of SJU and SHU. Frankly, they share the same Conference and play each other twice this coming season, once on each program's home floor. What happened last night or when "Little Louie" was coaching is immaterial. What happens when the two teams play each other in those two upcoming games will ultimately STILL NOT decide which is the better team because there are too damn many variables that come into play. One of the two of you could end the Conference schedule 2-16 while the other finishes 16-2, but because of the crosstown nature of your relationship and your long history of play against one another, the 2 lonely wins by the 2-16 team could be the only 2 Conferences losses of the other!

Having 100,000 full time students on 15 different campuses has nothing to do with making one school's 13 scholarship players form a team that is better than the team at a school with 13 other D-1 scholarship players performing for a college with only one dinky campus in a crappy part of town. To show how unreliable such things can be to compare one school's basketball team or program with another, I checked how the two teams fared against one another last year and how each fared against the team I support. The findings are as unreliable as one could possibly imagine:

St. John beat Seton Hall both home and away
Seton Hall Beat Xavier both home and away
Xavier beat St. John both home and away.

GO FREAKING FIGURE!!!

[Amase2]

I'm not sure I understand the fighting between fans of SJU and SHU. Frankly, they share the same Conference and play each other twice this coming season, once on each program's home floor. What happened last night or when "Little Louie" was coaching is immaterial. What happens when the two teams play each other in those two upcoming games will ultimately STILL NOT decide which is the better team because there are too damn many variables that come into play. One of the two of you could end the Conference schedule 2-12 while the other finishes 12-2, but because of the crosstown nature of your relationship and your long history of play against one another, the 2 lonely wins by the 2-12 team could be the only 2 Conferences losses of the other!

Having 100,000 full time students on 15 different campuses has nothing to do with making one school's 13 scholarship players form a team that is better than the team at a school with 13 other D-1 scholarship players performing for a college with only one dinky campus in a crappy part of town. To show how unreliable such things can be to compare one school's basketball team or program with another, I checked how the two teams fared against one another last year and how each fared against the team I support. The findings are as unreliable as one could possibly imagine:

St. John beat Seton Hall both home and away
Seton Hall Beat Xavier both home and away
Xavier beat St. John both home and away.

GO FREAKING FIGURE!!!

Yea but dude, St. John's primary color is red.

[stever20]

Hardly on the bubble? Um…we were the hottest team in the country down the stretch leading up to the tourney and experts had us most likely in if we beat PC in the first round of the BET. It came down to the last game. We were not hardly on the bubble, we barely missed the tourney. The season before we were also on ESPN where experts said we were a team to watch on the bubble. That season we were more "barely on the bubble", but hey at least we were in the discussion.

That's my point. Even in the years we don't make it at least we have people saying "hey they are a bubble team". Of course that's not the goal, but it's much better than being totally irrelevant. I'm speaking from the total program perspective when I say SJ is in a different class. The Yankees of the 80's sucked. The Yankees of the late 90's were amazing. SJ of the 80's was amazing. SJ of the 2010's has been nothing special aside from 2011. That doesn't mean you can throw out the 80's. SHU has no famous NBA alumni. We have Mark Jackson, Chris Mullin, Malik Sealy, Ron Artest, etc. This is why I say it's a different program. There are virtually no Seton Hall fans. If you are in the NYC area no one will ask you how Seton Hall is doing, but when I'm on the trains and subways in the city or just in the tri-state area in general wearing SJ gear, people always stop me and talk about them asking how they are doing. I even had a guy stop me in Florida. When St. John's beat G'Town by 20 points last season our official bar (Stout NYC) had a wait of 15 minutes just to get in because it was so packed. And that's in a year we didn't even make the tourney. I just can't see the same happening for SHU.

I agree though we need to start pulling our end of the weight to keep this conference respectable. We have lots of talent and experience and can easily make the tourney but we can also easily miss it. One thing is for sure though: if we don't make the NCAA tourney this year, Lavin must go…no questions asked. If we don't make it then that means our players have not progressed at all even as JR's and SR's. He is also scaring all of us with the recruiting now which used to be his strong suit. He doesn't seem to be getting any commitments and now we have to compete with UK for some of them.

St John's wasn't the hottest team leading up to the BET. They had a 6 game winning streak, but went 2-2 last 4 games entering the BET. I do question if St John's had won rd 1 but lost rd 2(to Seton Hall) if they would have been in- another bad loss would have been pretty devastating there- in addition to the fact that they were saying that PC would have missed the tourney had they lost in the final even.