Pregame Big East Tournament Links

NEW YORK — On Saturday night, at the corner of Utopia and Union, Carnesecca Arena rattled and roared before St. John's final regular season game.


By Howard Smith, U.S. Presswire


"Seems like old times," said a guy who would know. As the team's 10 seniors were honored in the pre-game ceremony, Lou Carnesecca put the moment in perspective. "Those guys got us going again," said Carnesecca, his 86-year-old voice still hoarse from a lifetime of coaching.


http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/mensbasketball/bigeast/2011-03-08-st-johns-steve-lavin-dwight-hardy_N.htm

This season was supposed to be an awkward transition. It was supposed to be about clearing out the dregs of a disappointing decade, so that the St. John's program could renew itself next year, with one of the strongest recruiting classes in the country.

The Steve Lavin era couldn't officially start or invite reasonable judgment until his hand-picked players swarmed the court, not the 10 inherited seniors he sometimes referred to this season as his stepchildren.

Only someone forgot to tell St. John's.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704758904576188862883064584.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

As St. John’s has returned to national prominence, the senior guard Dwight Hardy has been the star, a dazzling scorer who chose to play for his hometown Red Storm at a time when that was not fashionable.

But what has made Hardy’s ascent so compelling is the circuitous route he took to arrive at a university only a subway ride away from where he grew up.

Hardy was raised roughly a mile from Yankee Stadium, in housing projects in the Bronx, in a complex that squeezes seven buildings and two basketball courts between Courtlandt and Park Avenues. But Hardy’s path to St. John’s took him to a prep school in North Carolina and then to a junior college in rural Iowa in an effort to qualify academically.

All roads led back to New York.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/sports/ncaabasketball/09redstorm.html?_r=1

The Big East Tournament begins today at Madison Square Garden with the eight lowest seeds in a 16-team league squaring off. But unlike recent seasons, when St. John's found itself in that bottom scrum (or worse, when the league only invited the top 12 finishers, shutting them out of playing on their own home court), the Red Storm received a bye.

This is going to be St. John's best chance to make a run deep into both the Big East and NCAA Tournaments since their glory days in the '80s.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2011/03/1551218/its-tournament-time-and-st-johns-might-actually-go-far

How’s this for irony?

Big East Conference commissioner John Marinatto rang the opening bell yesterday at the New York Stock Exchange, whose markets have been almost as wildly unpredictable as the results in Marinatto’s league.

“Anything you could tell me that could happen this week, I’d believe it,” Connecticut coach Jim Calhoun told The Post. “If someone thinks they’ve got it figured out, I’d love to hear it. Because I’ve been in this business for 39 years and I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/college/basketball/expect_the_unexpected_as_nation_8zrUbF96pm6ZqCbaiptdBO#ixzz1G4i78crz

This was exactly 49 weeks ago, which tells you how quickly the game can change in college basketball, and in New York City. The new coach of the St. John’s Red Storm was going to meet the press for the very first time, at halftime of one of the NIT semifinals.

The idea was to have the brief meet-and-greet in the rotunda opposite where the team benches are at Madison Square Garden, partly to provide a large space but also so this little gathering wouldn’t interfere with the NIT — and, yes, that was as humbling as it sounds. St. John’s — the theoretical basketball co-owners of the Garden — wanted to make sure to stay out of the way. Of the NIT.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/college/basketball/johnnies_return_elevates_big_east_s5QrZ0ax1JKusLtPbS0N1O#ixzz1G4iGDiIn

With 11 teams potentially headed for the NCAA Tournament, there are no gimmes in this year's Big East Tournament.

Even Tuesday's first round - normally reserved for the also-rans - will feature at least three teams that could be going to the NCAAs, including big-time programs in Villanova and Connecticut.

Almost every game should have late-March intensity.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/college/2011/03/08/2011-03-08_big_east_tournament_at_madison_square_garden_promises_battles_of_best_teams_in_t.html#ixzz1G4imDIRT

For once, for the first time in a long, long time, St. John’s shows up at the Garden today as Goliath, and a gritty, relentless, tough-minded Rutgers basketball team, the newly-crowned champions of New Jersey, carries a scarlet slingshot it believes can fell Steve Lavin’s monster with a bull’s-eye right between the eyes and bring a real-life version of the movie Hoosiers back home to Piscataway, of all places.

Just minutes after they had survived their New Jersey Death Match with Seton Hall, a tension-packed 76-70 comeback victory in overtime, the 15-16 Scarlet Knights issued Storm warnings from the corner of 33rd and Seventh all the way to Union Turnpike in Jamaica:

RU ready St. John’s?

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/college/basketball/ru_ready_for_garden_showdown_with_XM7fQKq2ScrSjRUMgClZiP#ixzz1G6sv9a00

It's Spring Break at St. John's University, but students hanging around the Queens campus have vowed to cheer their surging Red Storm hoops stars to Big East glory and beyond.

Coeds made plans Tuesday for dorm-room parties and sports-bar gatherings as their beloved Johnnies begin their quest for a Big East title today at Madison Square Garden.

Student Christopher Blount, 19, said one drawback to St. John's dream season is that tickets to the tourney are hard to get.

"We're not used to having to search for tickets," said Blount, a legal-studies major from Richmond, Va. "We're used to getting them at the box office five minutes before the games."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2011/03/09/2011-03-09_storm_has_campus_seeing_red_in_a_good_way_as_big_east_quest_starts.html#ixzz1G6tCJzGb

If they tuned in to watch North Carolina play Rutgers at the Garden back on Dec. 28, true St. John's fans won't soon forget the image. There, at center court of the Red Storm's home floor was en enormous red 'R,' the logo of Rutgers University. The Scarlet Knights were calling the Johnnies' house their own.

Nothing could be more startling for the St. John's fan - or player - although there's a bit of a trend there. Third-ranked Pittsburgh calls the Garden its "home away from home," even hollering "protect this house" in huddles before Big East Tournament games. Syracuse, too, claims the Garden as its second home and donned T-shirts that read "New York's College Team" on its last trip to midtown.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/college/2011/03/09/2011-03-09_st_johns_out_to_protect_garden_homecourt_against_rutgers_and_rest_of_big_east_to.html#ixzz1G6tIjudS

You can purchase a standard nylon basketball net on Amazon.com for $2.63. Yet, to a college basketball player in March, the nets are priceless baubles hanging from the rim.

It’s been more than a decade since a St. John’s player went to the hardwood jewelry store known as the Garden to cut down the nets in the Big East Conference Tournament. But since this squad dismantled Duke, 93-78 on Jan. 30, St. John’s, a bunch of diamonds in the rough, has come to see itself as a team of destiny, one that is the beneficent of strange magic.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/sports/college/basketball/johnnies_look_like_team_of_destiny_hDA9WfpjyYwrUhgRUOsnJN#ixzz1G6vB1NZY