When I was a little kid, I lived in South Jersey just thirty minutes from Atlantic City and thirty minutes from Philadelphia. Now when I was a schoolage boy, I feared St Johns basketball until middle school because I knew they could win every game (there was the period when Louie left with Mahoney struggling). I did not have a favorite college basketball team but I knew that St Johns was a school that winning was habitual. I always knew that their downperiods were short and their winning was long. I chose St Johns because I wanted to go to a school where the college basketball passion was strong (plus it had sports managment, a major I changed to Pre-Law after one semester). When I got to campus, passion was low due to losing Omar and we did not see what was up with our new recurit Marcus Hatten. I did not expect to make any tournament during my first year there but with Marcus, we made the tournament in a year we were supposed to do diddly. The next year, our February slump along with Grady Reynolds stupid foul against BC in the Big East tournament kept us from returning to the real tournament, we did salvage an NIT win which even though I was disapointed, I felt glad Marcus could use the NIT to influence his case to the NBA. Now you would think one rebuilding year and we are back would do it for this empire, what happened? We lose 2 of our rebuilding blocks to transfers along with one more, Jarvis's last hope left the school mid year, a towel twirller rats us out losing more building blocks, and in the end the damage is so great, no one wants to come to us even if they were paid $1 billion. I CAN'T SEE THE LIGHT ANYMORE. What hope is there for us. I saw no progress in this year's team and I can't see Mase and DJ leading us to the tournament next year. I cant wait anymore, I am fed up. I can't stand a 52-45 loss to Marquette five years ago and the players laughing about it the next day. I cant stand 10 point halfs. WE ARE ST JOHNS, in a four year period, we should be in the tournament three of them. Seven years is long enough. I have been in the hospital hopping from Long Island to Rockland County this past year with a lump in my throat which took away my voice and I now have a permanent trach and I speak through an electrolarynx now. The Eagles got me through the period when I found out my trach was permanent and college basketball covers the months before April but along with my sadness that I have a disability now, I have to be depressed that St Johns can make me smile either. I was thrilled when we made the tournament in 2002 but now, there is no light. Get Lance or not, NORM MUST GO. This time we get an X's and O's coach and if he can make this group of people work better, everything fixes itself. In the meantime, whenever I think of St Johns, it will be of Double JJs and Vincencios, not basketball because when I get out of the hospital, I do dream of eating a great deli sandwich from Double JJs and getting a whole pizza pie and scarfing it down because that is the only good I see coming from the university right now.