Accountability at St. John's

[SJUBBALL]

Here's my quick take on this topic:


We do not have a player who has played more than a year and a half of D1 basketball.

Its that simple. You expect us to win games against Nova, Creighton, Xavier, Seton Hall? They ALL have players who have been around for years now. I get tired of hearing "wait till next year" as well. with Lavin it turned out it didn't matter how good we were, Lavin couldn't coach them into a cohesive unit. I don't know if Mullin can do it, no one does yet. BUT We HAVE to wait.

If you really don't think our fans care enough about the direction of program you are out of your mind. I know countless great people I see at every damn game. They donate money to the school and do everything they can to help the program.

Hooper, you act like the fan base is crazy because in your mind there is no accountability... but really you are just freaking out on the program way to early. 2 years from now, if we are in the same situation, with a similar record, and still playing like sh*t, many fans will join you with this sense of anger and disappointment. Don't blame the entire fan base for giving a coach a fair chance at building a team. Thats not fair.

[Red Rooster]

This young boy has no idea what being a suffering SJU fan actually means. He mentions he had to sit through the Lavin years and now the Mullin regime. Yeah, I go back to Jarvis so keep quiet with your temper tantrum. I've seen the entire team kicked out of school and watch us play with a bunch of walk ons, kids who I played intramural against were playing UConn, GTown and Syracuse at MSG.

You are asking the new AD who is less than a month in his new role to fire Chris Mullin half way through his second year because YOU think he stinks. Thats not accountability thats emotion. If you think this team would be that much better this year than you don't know much about basketball. To me if everything broke just right and we gelled early at best we'd finish in 6th place and get an NIT birth. That was the BEST CASE SCENARIO!

No go take some provac and leave the rest of us alone.

What if Fran wasn't such a lunatic, and he wasn't fired? He recruited Artest Barkley Thornton Postell and those guy.
Would he still be here, with alot of successful season? We'll never know.

Jarvis was a better coach and got those kids to the elite8, but he didn't recruit the HS and AAU kids, and went the Junior coll. route, what a disaster that was.
Then the sex capades in pitt, resulted in a depleted team, with walk-ons. Then came the Keita incident. The Jarvis era was the low point.

Postell was recruited AND committed when Mahoney was the coach. He never played for Mahoney, as he was fired before Postell ever played a game for St. John's.

Jarvis did recruit the HS and AAU kids, but he was smug, and didn't care to kiss the rings of NYC HS and AAU coaches. In some ways, I can understand not bowing down to those coaches, but he totally went about it the wrong way, and it eventually bit him in the butt.

We know what Lavin done with Norms kids, or should I say Dunlap. 2nd year, his recruits 1st, 12 wins with a Dunlap coached team as Lav was resting with cancer. Lavin had a real good 1st year recruiting. The the cancer came, and his father died, then it was like he didn't care anymore.

Lavin was actually a decent defensive coach. Some people have become robots and parrots, and believe or perceive what they've heard to be the truth. Lavin's issue down the stretch was he put too many of his eggs in one basket. But, I also have a hunch, he would've put together a better roster than what we saw a season ago.

Well now it's Mullins turn, someone has to turn this ship around to the right direction, no? Hopefully the schools most beloved figure can.
He loves this school. To me if he can't then wtf can? With how I see it, if he can't turn it around, then we'll be another Fordham, NYU, CCNY, a once great BBall school that will never return to its glory days.

I'm still not one to believe St. John's has to go the way of Fordham, NYU, and CCNY, if Mullin doesn't work out. Although, I do agree the program could be a going down a precarious road, so to speak. Mullin should get another season or two, depending on what he does the third season, whether he receives a fourth season.

So again, what if Fran wasn't such a lunatic? Would he still be here, be successful as Jay Wright?
We'll never know. Oh well.

I really thought Fraschilla was the one who was gonna guide the Johnnies back to the upper echelon of college hoops. He had things going in the right direction, and an NCAA Tournament berth during his second season only increased my confidence in him.

Speaking of Jay Wright, as he was in line for St. John's job had Jarvis ended up with the Washington Wizards. Of course, we'll never know what could've been, with Fraschilla or Wright.

[NJRedman]

NJRedman, "junior"? What are you going to do next, tell me to get off your lawn? Part of the reason much of the SJ fanbase is so out of touch and annoying is because they are mostly over the hill guys with kids my age if not older still referring to the team as the "Redmen" even though it was dropped 20+ yrs ago. They are from an era where we were nationally respected and relevant culminating in a Final Four run. So because of that, you just expect that we will get back there since it happened in your lifetime. Anyone in the mid to late 20's like me have never witnessed St. John's as anything other than a mediocre to putrid team with maybe 1 or 2 blips of real success. And you are the one acting like I'm spoiled sitting through the Lavin and Mullin era. The real spoiled ones are the fans old enough to have seen us on top of the college basketball world. Ok gramps? And while you're at it, keep telling an actual psychologist about psychology and I'll tell an NHL player how to play hockey, even though I've never played before.

I think what I'm seeing here is proof of my assertion: there is zero accountability at St. John's and this extends from the greater fan base to the administration of the school. It really is no wonder then why we have not seen results in decades. Any time a SJ fan even suggests that this team should be better or that maybe Mullin is not the answer, they become alleged communists or witches back in the Salem days. I just saw a guy Ray Morgan get blasted on Redmen for suggesting that we should be doing better and maybe Mullin was not a great hire after all. People who suggest we need to do better and may need a new coach are accused of having a mental disorder. Is this really where we are at? It just proves the desperate need for my question above.

I'm 35 and was a freshman in 1999 so keep thinking im some old man with kids your age.

You don't just suggest the team be better you demand instant results. Halfway though the first season of Mullin having a full roster you want him gone and asking the school for accountability. What proof do you have that there is zero accountability? The President is new, the AD hasn't even been on the job a month yet and the coach is halfway through his second season and you are acting like we've had the same shitty coaching staff the last 20 friggin years. Get over yourself junior, you're clearly a young dumb kid who doesn't know his @$$ from his elbow. You were in school during Lavins era, that means you are mid-20's tops. You aren't as smart as you think you are and you aren't as clinical as you think you are. You are a bi-polar and irrationally emotional KID who hasn't learned to deal with the highs and lows of being a sports fan yet.

Children demand instant results, adults learn patience and to let things play out before making up their minds one way or another.

You're an actual psychologist like i'm an actual NHL player.

[BigEast1]

Hooper I admire your passion for St. John's, but come on. You do realize that this team won only 7 games last year (8 if you count D-II Chaminade). Anyone realistically expecting 21 plus wins or them being an NCAA dark horse clearly, is just not rational. I am not saying you predicted that, but you made reference to others who did. There's a reason why this team was pre-season 8, 9 or 10th, depending on which poll you believe. They are not that good, period. Yes they may be better than last year, & yes next year may be better, but this team is (unfortunately if you're a St. John's fan) exactly where they should be given their talent level, & I guess some might argue, their coaching. I don't know if Mullin is the answer, at least not yet, but I think you need to recognize that this team, barring a miraculous turn around, is team destined to finish at the bottom of the league this year.

[SJHooper]

For some reason, my blunt realist perspective is always misconstrued as being "negative", but that's not true. If anything, I will get TOO excited about this team when they are up. As I said, when we were ranked #15 just a few years ago, I was on a trip in New Orleans proudly wearing my SJ gear. I was absolutely thrilled. I wear my gear anyway, but it was so refreshing to see them nationally relevant and respected and being discussed in the tourney previews. Someone who is negative will always see the bad even if it's not a bad situation. For example, anyone watch My Super Sweet 16? It's a show about spoiled rich kids. Anyway, one girl's parents bought her a brand new $100,000 Mercedes. She was disgusted...because it was not the color she wanted. THAT is being negative. Finding something negative in an overwhelmingly positive situation. With SJ, I'm not seeing where I should be optimistic. IMO we have 2 Big East players who would definitely start on most Big East teams: LoVett and Ponds. Other than that, who do we really have that we can really rely on? As much credit as I give Matt A, it's much easier to recruit when you can dangle a huge block of playing time in front of them guaranteed. The hard part comes now...when we have a full team, but need to find specific pieces to perfect the soup. We also cannot offer unlimited PT anymore, so it will be harder to recruit not even mentioning our overall performance on the court this year. This is what separates the good recruiters from the average ones. If anyone has earned his money, it's Matt A so he absolutely deserves the benefit of the doubt. My concern is primarily with Mullin...he has made strides as a new coach, but I just don't see that fire. Perception becomes reality and sitting drinking a Perrier while your team is getting throttled is just very concerning and curious regardless of coaching experience. He seems like he's more of a mentor and I wish he could just be closely in touch with the program while we had a real seasoned head coach. Maybe he could be a special assistant?

I also stand by my stance that we need to stop with the Euro & OSNA experiments. We have not had 1 Euro player come in who can truly produce consistently at this level so far and we've had our fair share. We also have not had any skilled players come from OSNA. They are cookie-cutter big men who are way too skinny and while they are athletic, they get dominated by skilled bigs at this level. They can get away with their raw athleticism in HS but not in the Big East. Let's get some of those 6'10 235 lb farm boys in the heartland. Everyone else seems to find em. We don't need bigs to be stars...clearly we are built to have our guards lead the way with the star power while our bigs are supposed to be gritty rebounders and defenders who really only need to be able to dunk and lay it up. A hook shot also wouldn't hurt. I am not giving up on this team, but I am certainly far from impressed so far. Next year is really key. If there is not a considerable jump in performance, I expect others to join me with reservations.

[Savannah Jay]

Hooper I admire your passion for St. John's, but come on. You do realize that this team won only 7 games last year (8 if you count D-II Chaminade). Anyone realistically expecting 21 plus wins or them being an NCAA dark horse clearly, is just not rational. I am not saying you predicted that, but you made reference to others who did. There's a reason why this team was pre-season 8, 9 or 10th, depending on which poll you believe. They are not that good, period. Yes they may be better than last year, & yes next year may be better, but this team is (unfortunately if you're a St. John's fan) exactly where they should be given their talent level, & I guess some might argue, their coaching. I don't know if Mullin is the answer, at least not yet, but I think you need to recognize that this team, barring a miraculous turn around, is team destined to finish at the bottom of the league this year.

I don't know if Mullin is the answer either, but is there a person who cares more about St. John's basketball than Chris Mullin? As an "outsider," it appears that Mullin took the job because he thought that he could do something to bring SJU basketball back to prominence. I don't see him as a big ego guy, so his interest appears solely to improve the program. The accountability, in my opinion, will come from Mullin before administration (and MOST fans : )). If it gets to the point that the program is not headed in the right direction, I think Mullin will hold himself accountable and no one will have to fire him.

[BigEast1]

Hooper, would you feel better if Mullin was standing & drinking water while the team was getting blown out?

[Bill Marsh]

I agree with your point about patience. Excellent point.

With regard to Mullin's lack of readiness, I disagree. No doubt that there was risk since he'd never actually managed a program before. But it's not the first time this has been done. Sometimes it works and sometimes it fails miserably. But I don't think the failures have to do with the inability to draw up X's and O's. Or knowing the right play for the right situation.

John Calipari never drew up a situational play in his life. It's not what he does. But he's a highly successful coach. Neither has Jim Calhoun, whom I watched up close and personal for years. He's also very successful obviously. These guys are systems coaches and they run their system regardless of the situation.

I think the decision had to do with putting a new face on the franchise. I think they felt that they needed credibility and they needed to reestablish ties to HS and AAU coaches in the city to build a pipeline to the talent base they should own. Bobby Gonzale! Whom you mention, is a great X's and O's coach. I'm sure he could always come up with the right play for the right situation. But that's not what did him in at Seto Hall. Nor is it what did Fran Fraschilla, another great X's and O's guy, in at St John's years ago. Their failures were due to their inability to manage people and to handle the other stresses of the job.

I think that St John's made the calculation that Mullin would be a good leader of young men, who would have the character to represent the university well, who would avoid the pitfalls that brought down Jarvis and Fraschilla. Time will tell if they were right. I don't think there's any question that Mullin knows a ton of basketball. Regardless of whether he's coached before, I don't think that will be his downfall.

One of the things that impressed StJohn's new transfers, Marvin Clark and Justin Simon, was how well the practices were run and how well those practices seemed connected to what the coaches were expecting in game situations. These were guys who were already playing for other college coaches. I think that speaks volumes about what Mullin already has in place. As you said, the process takes time - especially given what Mullin inherited.

I don't disagree with anything that you said and I think that Chris Mullin can be successful. I just think he'd have been better served by starting out in a situation where he faced less pressure from impatient fans and was competing against other coaches that we're around his level rather than in a league that has nearly half its teams ranked in the top 25. He can learn and grow fast at St. John's, provided the administration gives him the time he needs and he's able to ignore the calls for his head by angry, impatient fans. To reiterate, it requires patience.

How many coaches have taken their 1st ever coaching job at a high major? How many of them have been successful? How many found success quickly? I don't know any of these numbers, but I'd guess they're all fairly low.

I don't know either how often it's been done. I do know that it was a spectacular failure at Houston when they took former star, Clyde Drexler, and made him the face of their program right after he retired. I think that a better compaeison is Fred Hoiberg who was spectacularly successful at Iowa State. What he has in common with Mullin is that he didn't step into College head coaching right after retirement as a player. Like Mullin, he did it after working for years as an NBA executive. That enabled him to transition to reporting to work in a regular job, to acquire management skills, and to see if he liked going to work in a different role than being a player. Kevin Ollie took over the UConn program shortly after retiring as a player and with only 2 years as a Calhoun assistant. Mullin has actually had far more management experience than Ollie did after their playing days. I doubt that 2 years as someone's assistant would have transformed Mullin and made him more ready for the job,

Former players successfully switching to head coaching roles with no prior experience has been more common in the NBA in recent years than in college. Doc Rivers, Avery Johnson, Larry Bird, and former Mullin teammate Mark Jackson are among a number of NBA coaches who managed the transition very successfully without prior experience. Otherwise I think we'd have to dig farther back in the annals of college coaching to come up with a long list of examples. St John's themselves did it back in the early days of championship play with the legendary Joe Lapchick. Two of the greatest coaches in the history of the sport had little or no head coaching experience before taking over the jobs that made them famous - John Wooden and Red Auerbach.

[SJHooper]

think it reflects poorly with that body language and very hard to defend. Some games it looks like he can't be bothered and at times he appears nonchalant. Even Richmond is face-palming all game. Imagine being 18-22 yrs old looking to your coaches for leadership and they are just sitting there on the sidelines like they are watching a boring play. I'm not saying to bring in Mike Rice and have him flip out on the kids, but is it too much to ask to be animated and show passion? There have been at least 3-4 times where the ANNOUNCERS were chuckling whether the camera panned to him sitting and drinking his Perrier, sitting on the scorers table (to his credit he stopped that after last yr), sitting on the sidelines, or during a mic'd up session where he offered vague motivational words rather than a real game plan i.e. "let's go guys", "we got this", "get the ball in the hoop". It's cringeworthy and that's why the announcers laugh. They would never throw him under the bus, but they know what it looks and sounds like.

Please do not take this and assume that I dislike Mullin as a person. He's a great guy and he's the best player to ever wear our uniform. He was also nice enough to sign a jersey for me in person at Carnesecca. But as a coach, he really needs a lot of work and I believe it would go a LONG way if he stopped hiring friends and the sons of friends as assistant coaches and tried to get the best possible for the job. If we got a big man coach in place of Richmond and a great X and O's/fundamentals guy in place of St. Jean, I really think he'd benefit greatly. Then it would make a lot more sense to defer to a seasoned X and O's guy rather than a 26 yr old with minimal experience. Goodman on ESPN never lets us hear the end of it...he mocks the fact that Mullin defers to a 26 yr old to coach every chance he gets. As much as I dislike Goodman, he does have a point. I hope for Mullin's success as much as anyone, it would be a storybook ending...the golden boy comes home and saves his alma mater.

To be fair there is a lot of the season left so we will see, but I'll feel a lot more optimistic if I see the team get back to playing like they did against Butler and Cuse. I know we will be red hot some games and ice cold others, but at this point in the season, it's fair to expect them to play consistently decent basketball.

[NJRedman]

For some reason, my blunt realist perspective is always misconstrued as being "negative", but that's not true. If anything, I will get TOO excited about this team when they are up. As I said, when we were ranked #15 just a few years ago, I was on a trip in New Orleans proudly wearing my SJ gear. I was absolutely thrilled. I wear my gear anyway, but it was so refreshing to see them nationally relevant and respected and being discussed in the tourney previews. Someone who is negative will always see the bad even if it's not a bad situation. For example, anyone watch My Super Sweet 16? It's a show about spoiled rich kids. Anyway, one girl's parents bought her a brand new $100,000 Mercedes. She was disgusted...because it was not the color she wanted. THAT is being negative. Finding something negative in an overwhelmingly positive situation. With SJ, I'm not seeing where I should be optimistic. IMO we have 2 Big East players who would definitely start on most Big East teams: LoVett and Ponds. Other than that, who do we really have that we can really rely on? As much credit as I give Matt A, it's much easier to recruit when you can dangle a huge block of playing time in front of them guaranteed. The hard part comes now...when we have a full team, but need to find specific pieces to perfect the soup. We also cannot offer unlimited PT anymore, so it will be harder to recruit not even mentioning our overall performance on the court this year. This is what separates the good recruiters from the average ones. If anyone has earned his money, it's Matt A so he absolutely deserves the benefit of the doubt. My concern is primarily with Mullin...he has made strides as a new coach, but I just don't see that fire. Perception becomes reality and sitting drinking a Perrier while your team is getting throttled is just very concerning and curious regardless of coaching experience. He seems like he's more of a mentor and I wish he could just be closely in touch with the program while we had a real seasoned head coach. Maybe he could be a special assistant?

I also stand by my stance that we need to stop with the Euro & OSNA experiments. We have not had 1 Euro player come in who can truly produce consistently at this level so far and we've had our fair share. We also have not had any skilled players come from OSNA. They are cookie-cutter big men who are way too skinny and while they are athletic, they get dominated by skilled bigs at this level. They can get away with their raw athleticism in HS but not in the Big East. Let's get some of those 6'10 235 lb farm boys in the heartland. Everyone else seems to find em. We don't need bigs to be stars...clearly we are built to have our guards lead the way with the star power while our bigs are supposed to be gritty rebounders and defenders who really only need to be able to dunk and lay it up. A hook shot also wouldn't hurt. I am not giving up on this team, but I am certainly far from impressed so far. Next year is really key. If there is not a considerable jump in performance, I expect others to join me with reservations.

You're not a blunt realist. If you were you'd realize we still have a real shot at finishing in 8th place in the conference. Thats improvement and the fact that you can't see that is why you are labeled negative. Being a realist is seeing improvement when it happens. We are a better team now than we were last year. Thats all you can ask a program to do. You are not a realist, you are a bipolar nut job who gets really high with the highs and really low with the lows. Thats not blunt realism.