Zagoria: Lavin's future at St. John's in doubt

[Bill Marsh]

It's odd that after all the success he's had at Iona, no one ever mentions Tim Cluess, a guy with extensive ties to St. John's, to Long Island, and to the NY area generally.

The reason is because his teams are great offensively but horrible defensively. That's his rep. By the way I would hire Billy Donovan before any of the other candidates in a second. He is from LI about 20 minutes (if not less) from the SJU campus and a 35 minute train ride to MSG on the Babylon LIRR line. He has won 2 championships and we know he would recruit extremely, extremely well. From what I've heard it's a long shot, but I don't know why. SJU could offer him a lot of money to come back home and be near family. As someone else said, he's done just about all he could at FLA and they have their 2 rings. I wouldn't mind a LeBron situation (win a few rings and try to go home and win) with him. I would assume the biggest factors against him coming are 1) NBA teams looking to pay much more for him or 2) FLA undoubtably has way more money to offer him than SJU and could pay him what he wants if they really want to keep him. But stranger things have happened.

I just hope if Lavin is fired, one of the guys being discussed is hired. Because if the school picks some random guy totally shocking people, it may be the final nail in the coffin for many SJU fans suffering since 1985.

Suffering since 1985? You're breaking my heart.

St. John's went to 2 Elite 8's in the '90's and won a BE championship in 2000.

Billy Donovan? Why not Rick Pitino? He's from LI too.

You complain about Cluess's teams only being great offensively. St. John's doesn't want great offense? Cluess's teams do nothing but win, averaging 24 wins per year. Not to mention the fact that he has great contacts among NY high school coaches sine he once was one and has the respect that comes from winning 4 state championships. I would think that should be enough to at least get him an interview.

[Steve Lavin]

It's odd that after all the success he's had at Iona, no one ever mentions Tim Cluess, a guy with extensive ties to St. John's, to Long Island, and to the NY area generally.

The reason is because his teams are great offensively but horrible defensively. That's his rep. By the way I would hire Billy Donovan before any of the other candidates in a second. He is from LI about 20 minutes (if not less) from the SJU campus and a 35 minute train ride to MSG on the Babylon LIRR line. He has won 2 championships and we know he would recruit extremely, extremely well. From what I've heard it's a long shot, but I don't know why. SJU could offer him a lot of money to come back home and be near family. As someone else said, he's done just about all he could at FLA and they have their 2 rings. I wouldn't mind a LeBron situation (win a few rings and try to go home and win) with him. I would assume the biggest factors against him coming are 1) NBA teams looking to pay much more for him or 2) FLA undoubtably has way more money to offer him than SJU and could pay him what he wants if they really want to keep him. But stranger things have happened.

I just hope if Lavin is fired, one of the guys being discussed is hired. Because if the school picks some random guy totally shocking people, it may be the final nail in the coffin for many SJU fans suffering since 1985.

Suffering since 1985? You're breaking my heart.

St. John's went to 2 Elite 8's in the '90's and won a BE championship in 2000.

Billy Donovan? Why not Rick Pitino? He's from LI too.

You complain about Cluess's teams only being great offensively. St. John's doesn't want great offense? Cluess's teams do nothing but win. I would think that should be enough to at least get him an interview.

I like Cluess and to be honest I wouldn't be too upset if we got him. We have never been a gifted offensive team. He is also well-known for getting all the good transfers and fitting them into his schemes nicely. I just heard that his teams don't just play poor defense but literally DON'T play defense. That's a problem.

Billy Donovan is in the headlines as potentially leaving. So it's not as crazy as you think.

And you act like 1985 was just yesterday. That was 30 years ago. Before the Mets won the WS in 86 which seems like forever ago itself. I'm 25 years old (26 soon) and have never seen a great SJU team in my lifetime. In 2000 I was 11 and not fully capable of understanding what was going on. in 1985 I was -4 years old. In the late 90's I was 8-10 years old. I've casually followed SJU since about 2007 but really became a diehard in 2011 (my last undergrad year at Marist). I became such a diehard that I chose to attend SJU for graduate school for my 3 yr MS program because it had a great program for what I wanted and also had the basketball team I loved rooting for. I wanted to be a part of it all. So I have honestly never seen SJU win a tourney game, BET game, or even come close to a BET championship much else a Final Four.

[TBC Alum]

Billy Donovan? Why not Rick Pitino? He's from LI too.

The dollars and the perceptions of the FB5 vs the Big East are probably the main reasons.

But I feel the time is coming soon when one of these big names will make the jump, if only for the reason that we formed - to get away from the dredge of football and be the primary focus for the university. You can't tell me that some of these egos would not just eat that up.

[lolhoya]

I don't know what St. John's should do, but they should do it quickly. Coaches are going to get snatched up fast.

Hurley seems like a terrific fit, especially since he's from the area.

I'm usually skeptical of coaches without recruiting experience, but Mark Jackson seems like the kind of guy who would enjoy recruiting and be good at it. And high school kids know who he is, which helps a lot. I think he would be a good choice too if he's interested.

Mullin seems like a big risk to me.

[MUPanther]

Go try to get Mark Jackson.

[SJU1987]

Do a Yahoo search, Type in Billy Donovon to ....... I typed that and about 10 different schools were listed in the search results.

St. John's offered $3 million a year to Donovon in 2010 and he turned them down. Repole, the Vitamin water guy, made the offer.
It's good having a billionaire on our side !

[trephin]

I like Cluess but he does have a rep for zero defense as well as needing a certain amount of academic flexibility for athletes.

Gut feeling is that Mullin would say no because it would be coming home. Jackson on the other hand, I think would accept. Whether he would be the best choice is another issue.

[Wheelhouse]

Do people actually think that Billy Donovan would go to St. John's? That's delusional.

[Bill Marsh]

I like Cluess but he does have a rep for zero defense as well as needing a certain amount of academic flexibility for athletes.

St. John's has a zero tolerance policy for academic flexibility for athletes?

The fact that Cluess has sought academic flexibility for his players somehow makes him an exception among college basketball coaches? Jim Boeheim. And Roy Williams beg to disagree.

High scoring teams that run and fun are often accused of playing no defense. Fact is that teams like that typically use their defense to generate their offense. When he took over at Iona, he created a team that was 25th in the country in steals and 19th in forced turnovers. I don't know how his opponents measure defense, but that's defense. And that's been his signature at Iona.

[billyjack]

Here's a NY Post article about St John's and Donovany from 2010:

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/colle ... e-1.176774

Johnnies offered $3 million in 2010 to Donovan, but Billy D wasn't interested.

I didn't say it was likely, but it had been discussed in the sports pages 5 years ago.
And St John's still has the wealthy Vitamin Water guy.

For those that think Florida is too good a job to move to NY... it was Billy D himself who made Florida a premier coaching spot. The Gators were a solid program in the 90's, but before Donovan arrived they had earned only 5 NCAA bids in their history.